Highways Agency Reports

Road foundations, representing standard designs of the Department of Transport, were constructed on three soils of different subgrade strength in a pilot-scale facility and instrumented to measure vertical sudgrade stress and strain. The results of this investigation together with those from earlier studies are used to demonstrate that it may be possible to formulate an elastic criterion for the adequacy of the foundation against excessive deformation by traffic during road construction. Proposals are given for future work on design as well as the assessment of foundations.