Influence of Plunger Stress on Resilient Modulus of Forest Subgrade Soils Obtained from Cyclic CBR Test

The low load-bearing capacity of subgrade soils is typical for forest roads. For the determination of the resilient modulus Mr of unbound natural as well as recycled materials, a laboratory triaxial test with cyclic loading is generally preferred. For low volume roads, including forest roads, an alternative method of the cyclic CBR test, which uses standard CBR devices for repeated loading, is being tested and applied in practice. For forest subgrade soils, the procedure for determining the modulus Mr based on cyclic loading of the specimen to a constant penetration depth of 2.54 mm was verified. This procedure was tested on an extensive dataset obtained from 11 forest roads in the Czech Republic, which was then statistically evaluated. The obtained results showed disproportionately high mean values as well as high random variability. Further data analysis revealed that the reason seemed to be the chosen test methodology. When using this procedure for forest soils, high values of plunger stress can occur, which for many types of soils greatly exceed their maximum load-bearing capacity. As result, the modulus Mr is determined at unrealistically high plunger stress values and in many cases on the disrupted specimen. The necessary solution to this shortcoming is to censor the results of the cyclic CBR test, i.e., to exclude unrealistic values of the modulus Mr determined at plunger stresses exceeding the limit values.