Impact of Climate Change on Subgrade Soils Resilient Modulus using Thornthwaite Moisture Index

Research studies on highways performance due to climate change followed a pattern of replacing the historical climate data with predicted climate data. Only updating the temperature and precipitation data will not directly calculate the soil moisture content, which is one of the critical parameters in pavement design. Soil moisture affects the resilient modulus and stiffness of the pavement layers. This study focuses on understanding the impact of soil moisture and resilient modulus due to the changing climate through the Thornthwaite Moisture Index (TMI). The authors studied the effect of climate change on the soil moisture and resilient modulus across Austin, Houston, and El Paso cities of Texas. The future predicted climate data for 2020 to 2060 for the three cities are downloaded from CMIP5 climate projections. TMI-ASU model is used for the calculation of the TMI. Enhanced Integrated Climate Model (EICM) is adopted to determine the soil moisture variation and resilient modulus. The results indicate that the climate is becoming arid in the future years, and it varies across cities. The climate for Austin varies from dry sub-humid to semi-arid for future scenarios. Climate projections for El Paso suggest that there is not much change in TMI, indicating climate remains arid for future conditions. For Houston, the existing environment is humid, and as the TMI is decreasing over the years, making it moist to dry sub-humid and further making the climate semi-arid.

• Record URL:
  https://annualmeeting.mytrb.org/OnlineProgram/Details/15889
• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AKG40 Standing Committee on Mechanics and Drainage of Saturated and Unsaturated Geomaterials.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Sharma, Megha
  • Inti, Sundeep
  • Tandon, Vivek
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 100th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2021-1-5 to 2021-1-29
• Date: 2021

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 18p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Climate change; Evapotranspiration; Forecasting; Indexes (Information management); Modulus of resilience; Moisture content; Pavements; Soils; Subgrade materials
• Geographic Terms: Austin (Texas); El Paso (Texas); Houston (Texas)
• Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Materials; Pavements; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01763996
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: TRBAM-21-03222
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 4 2021 10:57AM