Do you dare to stand on this tall pile of rocks which seems to even fall apart by itself? A little twist here to make this “Rock-made Jenga” support a 150 lbs. person is simply by sliding thin layers of perforated plastic, which in the civil engineering world, we call “geogrid.” Our research helps to design a more stable crushed rock layer (in civil engineering world, again, we call it aggregate base course layers) in our highways, airport runways and railroad tracks with geogrids. Does it sound easy so far? Just by sliding in the geogrids, will we have more resilient, stable and longer-lasting pavement structure? Not really… A lot has to be done to find the right geogrid to match the rocks the project is using and to quantify the effect of geogrid for design purpose. In order to do this, we are using state-of-the-art Bender Element Technology developed in house, at the University of Illinois, to characterize the movement of crushed rocks with and without adding geogrid under dynamic loading. This helps us optimize our infrastructure and ultimately design better transportation systems to serve communities.
