Title:

Moisture-Sensitive Behavior of Pavement Subgrades: Insights from Physical Modeling

Flooding, groundwater fluctuations, and seasonal moisture variations can significantly alter the performance of pavement subgrades, creating challenges for infrastructure resilience, serviceability, maintenance planning, and post-event decision-making. These changes are especially important for transportation systems exposed to environmental variability, extreme weather, and repeated traffic loading, where moisture-sensitive loss of support can accelerate damage and reduce operational reliability. This study investigates the hydro-mechanical response of subgrade soils under cyclic loading across a range of moisture conditions relevant to pavement infrastructure. The work is intended to provide an integrated understanding of how changes in saturation, suction, density, and soil type influence stiffness, deformation, stress distribution, and pore-pressure response under repeated loading. The research combines laboratory and large-scale testing with geotechnical modeling to examine subgrade behavior from both experimental and predictive perspectives and to build a broader framework for interpreting moisture-dependent performance. Preliminary findings indicate that moisture condition plays a governing role in subgrade response, with partially saturated states generally exhibiting higher stiffness and improved resistance to permanent deformation compared to fully saturated conditions, while excess moisture promotes softening, greater settlements, weaker load transfer, and increased susceptibility to instability. The results further highlight the importance of soil type and state variables in controlling deformation patterns, stress transmission, and the evolution of response under cyclic loading. By linking observed response trends with modeling approaches, the study contributes to improved interpretation and prediction of moisture-sensitive subgrade behavior. The outcomes are expected to support more reliable evaluation of pavement systems under changing environmental conditions and to contribute to the development of more resilient design, assessment, and infrastructure management strategies for transportation networks subjected to moisture fluctuations and repeated loading.

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