Viabilidade econômica do uso de geogrelha aplicada na pavimentação rodoviária: estudo de caso no município de Delmiro Gouveia – Alagoas

Abstract

Roadways are routes that allow the transport of passengers and goods. It can be pavemented or not, providing safety and comfort to the users. The roadway paving must provide enough capacity to support the load and allow a long durability of the pavement. When there is a lack of materials to provide the required capacity to the pavement structure, innovative construction techniques are applied in order to fill this lack, especially when it is difficult to find the materials around the construction site. Therefore, the transportation of large volumes of materials to build the pavement layers increases the pavement cost. Under these circumstances, geogrids are applied in the base course of the pavement to reduce its thickness. However, although the geogrids satisfy the technical requisites to replace the conventional materials, it is necessary to analyze the economic viability of its use. The present study analyzes the application of geogrids in base course comparing it to the conventional pavement. Furthermore, an economic analysis of the geogrid application in a project in Delmiro Gouveia - Alagoas was conducted for five different life cycles. The conventional pavement was designed based on AASHTO (1993), while the reinforced pavement was designed based on the modified AASHTO method. The values used to estimate the costs are from the official database of values for the state of Alagoas – Brazil. The estimating cost for the different life cycles and pavement structures shows that the application of geogrid can reduce the pavement cost depending on the life cycle for this particular project. Thereby, the use of geogrid in the pavement structure is an alternative that can reduce costs in situations where it is difficult to find proper materials nearby the construction site.