Accelerated assessment of quality of compacted geomaterials with intelligent compaction technology

•An alternate approach to assess the compaction quality of geomaterials is proposed.•The approach is based on quantifying the lift contribution to roller measurements.•Influence of moisture variation on in-situ and roller measurements is investigated.

This paper presents the results of the assessment of several popular guidelines and test protocols for the practical use of intelligent compaction at construction sites. In addition to the timely data processing and analysis, other practical challenges that impede the wide use of the intelligent compaction are establishing criteria for high quality compaction and relations between the in situ and roller measurements. Several test strips with varying moisture contents were constructed and evaluated to determine the best strategy to select the target intelligent compaction values. Several in situ test devices (such as nuclear density gauge, lightweight deflectometer and dynamic cone penetrometer) were used to compare the compacted layer properties with roller measurements. Considering the inherent variability of the material properties and relations between the in situ and roller measurements, an alternate approach to building test sections for estimating the target intelligent compaction value was evaluated. The alternative approach is based on quantifying the lift contribution to the intelligent compaction value. The proposed approach seems to be a good compromise between achieving a high quality compacted layer and providing enough flexibility to contractors to use their know-how in expediting the construction process.