Quality Engineering Solutions (QES) owns and operates coring equipment capable of extracting two, four, or six inch pavement cores. We also have the capabilities of auguring unbound pavement sublayer materials with either four or six inch augers.

The construction information often does not sufficiently provide the precise pavement structure that is required in order to accurately analyze Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) data. In order to accurately determine the layer types and thickness, destructive tests often need to be performed. This means removing a pavement core from the bound materials, then auguring through any base and subbase material down into the subgrade. QES engineers and technicians have utilized this sampling technique on numerous occasions and find it to be a relatively quick and easy method for allowing both layer type and layer thickness determination.

An additional benefit of pavement coring is the determination of cracking propagation. For purposes of developing the most effective rehabilitation strategies, it is important to understand whether the visible cracking is initiated from the top down or from the bottom up. Taking cores over cracked sections of pavements provides great insight into the pavement distress mechanism. This enables an accurate measurement of layer thickness and provides samples for soil classification and laboratory testing.

Coring & sampling and deflection testing using our FWD can occur concurrently, requiring only temporary traffic disruption of a single lane during operations.