Estimating Compaction of Cohesive Soils from Machine Drive Power

To evaluate roller-integrated machine drive power (MDP) technology for predicting the compaction parameters of cohesive soils considering the influences of soil type, moisture content, and lift thickness on machine power response, a field study was conducted with 15-m test strips using three cohesive soils and several nominal moisture contents. Test strips were compacted using a prototype CP-533 static padfoot roller with integrated MDP technology and tested using various in situ compaction measurement devices. To characterize the roller machine-soil interaction, soil testing focused on measuring compaction parameters for the compaction layer. Variation in both MDP and in situ measurements was observed and attributed to inherent variability of the compaction layer and measurement errors. Considering the controlled operations to create relatively uniform conditions of the test strips, measurement variability observed in this study establishes a baseline for acceptable variation in production operations using MDP technology in cohesive soils. Predictions of in situ compaction measurements from MDP were found to be highly correlated when moisture content and MDP-moisture interaction terms were incorporated into regression models.