The performance of bedding sands in concrete block pavements

Concrete block paving is an alternative to conventional pavements that has been used extensively in Europe and only on a small scale in North America. Bedding sands make up an integral part of concrete block pavements and certain performance failures have been attributed to the use of unsuitable sands.;The purpose of this thesis is to investigate methods to determine the suitability of a sand to be used as a laying course in concrete block pavements. The geotechnical properties of a total of 23 sands were determined experimentally. From the test results, several sands were selected to represent good, medium and poor bedding sands. These sands were then tested in an experimental pavement subjected to dynamic plate loading.;Correlations between the geotechnical properties of different sands and their corresponding performance in terms of rut development in the experimental pavement, provide a method of selecting suitable sands. The direct shear test and percent passing the 0.075 mm sieve were the most significant indicators of bedding sand performance in this research. Degradation estimates using the Micro Deval procedure were not significant in selecting bedding sand.