Design, Fabrication, and Instrumentation of a Full-Scale Pavement Testing Box

The state-of-the-art testing facility presents a significant step towards expanding the full-scale testing capabilities of pavement laboratories to better simulate field conditions. A comprehensive experimental program was recently designed and implemented at the University of Nevada, Reno, as part of a Federal Highway Administration project on "Analysis Procedures for Evaluating Superheavy Load Movement on Flexible Pavements." This comprehensive program included five full-scale experiments with different objectives and characteristics. These experiments contained layered pavement systems of asphalt concrete, crushed aggregate base, and subgrade. The key element in the experiments was a square large-scale box, referred to as PaveBox. The internal dimensions of the PaveBox were 10.3 ft by 10.3 ft, with a 7 ft adjustable height. A hydraulic static and dynamic actuator was used to apply surface loads on a Falling weight deflectometer (FWD) loading plate. FWD tests at different load levels were applied while each experiment was extensively instrumented to provide a comprehensive database of the system response. This paper presents the detailed description of the PaveBox design, fabrication, and instrumentation. The efforts undertaken to construct the pavement structures, as well as, special considerations to address several concerns during the application of the FWD loading are presented, such as the reflection of waves at the PaveBox boundaries.