Development of a Geosynthetic Mechanical Stabilization Technique for Road Subgrade in Warming Cold Regions

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Roads are of vital economic, social, and political importance in all Canadian regions. Subgrade is thefoundation of the road, thus it is the lowest and most important component of a road structure. Thegeotechnical stability or safety of road structures significantly relies on the strength, bearing capacity and settlement of the subgrade soils. However, extensive evidence exists of increase in soil freezing and thawing cycles in Canadian no-permafrost regions (underlie about half of Canada's landmass) over the past decades because of the climatic warming. This climate induced change in freezing and thawing cycles has been negatively affecting the performance of many subgrades of roads constructed in Canadian no-permafrost regions, increasing their maintenance costs, decreasing their useful life span, and jeopardizing the population safety and economic activities in those regions. Therefore, significant research and development efforts continue to be devoted to finding techniques for mitigating subgrade degradation induced by freezing/thawing cycles, and to properly and cost-effectively design roads in the warming Canadian cold regions. In the proposedcollaborative project between the University of Ottawa and the company, Titan Environmental Containment Ltd., a novel technique consisting of subgrade stabilization by using a new generation custom made Geogrid Composites (GC) will be developed and studied in this project. The development of the proposed new technique will open up the lucrative and immense market of building and maintaining road systems in the Canadian no-permafrost regions in light of global warming as well as in other regions. This will result in business opportunities for TITAN at both the national and international levels. Moreover, it is expected that the results of this project will have economic and social impacts on the Canadian no-permafrost regions. Furthermore, this project is fertile ground for the training of civil road engineering and climate change adaptation.