Research Projects

Geo-hazards in the form of landslides are very common in hilly terrain, especially along the transportation corridors having deep cuts into rock slopes. Such natural occurrences can cause substantial damage to the hilly roads and other transportation infrastructure. As a result, the routes get shut down, traffic flow gets hampered and ultimately, the connectivity stops. It is also important to notice that the repair works of these hilly roads, which usually involves repair or replacement of the surface and base layers, takes a long time due to unavailability of required natural and economic resources. So, the construction and repair of such roads located in landslide-prone mountainous regions require an efficient, quick, durable, sustainable, and economical method that makes transportation and connectivity smooth. Hence, the proposed study aims to experimentally investigate the performance of hilly roads, wherein the base layer of the pavement will be constructed with locally available materials and Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste and confined with geogrids (two-dimensional confinement) and geocells (three-dimensional confinement) under simulated traffic loading conditions in the field. An additional set of prototype tests will be conducted to study the impact resistance of the unreinforced and reinforced pavement sections under rockfall condition. The field-scale and prototype tests will be followed with numerical analysis to assess various intricate geotechnical design aspects of such problems Thus, there will be five major aspects of this project: (1) Field experiments on geocell- and geogrid-reinforced hilly roads over a stretch of 160 m under simulated low-volume traffic loading condition; (2) Determination of rut reduction factor, traffic benefit ratio, and dynamic modulus of the reinforced sections with respect to the unreinforced pavement section; (3) Prototype model tests to study the impact behaviour of reinforced and unreinforced pavement sections under rockfall conditions; (4) Rigorous numerical analysis (3D finite element method-based) for in-depth study of related criticalities; and (5) On the basis of experimental and numerical analysis, assessing the most effective reinforcement method among the 2-D and 3-D geosynthetic confinement and providing design recommendations thereof for efficient and quick way of road construction and repair using locally available material or Construction and Demolition Waste in the base layer.