Resilient modulus of fine-grained soil and a simple testing and calculation method for determining an average resilient modulus value for pavement design

The resilient modulus has been recognised as an important property that governs the performance of pavement materials under the dynamic wheel loads. The resilient modulus can be obtained from a repeated load triaxial test with a series of a combination of deviator and confining stresses. It is traditionally reported as a function of the deviator and confining stresses, which can be a practical challenge in selecting the appropriate resilient modulus value for a pavement design. In this study, eight different Victorian fine-grained soils with different moisture contents were used for the determination of the resilient modulus and the evaluation of a proposed simplified method. The resilient modulus from the simplified method is reported as a single value, which is taken as the average value from the simplified testing method. It has been found that the resilient modulus obtained from the proposed simplified and the standard testing method are almost identical.