NACOE Releases Draft Technical Note – Guidance on Use of Light Weight Falling Deflectometers (LWDs) to be Accepted as an Alternative Method for Verification of Earthworks Compaction Requirements – June 2021

Apr 6, 2022 | Bearing Capacity, Compaction Control, Rail Formation & Ballast Condition Assessment

National Asset Centre of Excellence (NACOE), a collaboration of Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads and the Australian Road Research Board (ARRB), has released their final report for the Best practice in compaction quality assurance for pavement and subgrade materials – P60 project. Importantly, in Appendix A of this report, is the Draft Technical Note – Guidance on Use of Light Weight Falling Deflectometers (LWDs) to be Accepted as an Alternative Method for Verification of Earthworks Compaction Requirements – June 2021.

 

This draft technical note provides guidance on implementation of Light Weight Deflectometers including a flow chart showing key steps for assessment/derivation of equivalent acceptance thresholds for LWD use (in lieu of traditional (density) testing minimum thresholds included in MRTS04 – General Earthworks).

 

We believe this “How to” guide will be very useful for industry on projects across the country. You can visit our website to access the full report and other resources.

 

If you have any feedback and thoughts on the Draft Technical Note, we’d love to hear them! Contact us.

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Brett McDonald

Department of Transport and Main Roads, QLD

The PANDA probe is giving us and the construction team very useful insight with immediate feedback on the compaction being achieved on a major new rail construction project in QLD. We have two teams working daily using PANDA DCP’s and the Automatic Hammer on the rail formation, enabling real time decision making with confidence, based on the highly repeatable results.

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Senior Geotechnical Engineer, CMW GeoSciences

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