Why Compaction Meter Value (CMV) Is a Good Measure of Pavement Stiffness: Towards a Possible Theoretical Explanation

To measure stiffness of the compacted pavement, practitioners use the Compaction Meter Value (CMV); a ratio between the amplitude for the first harmonic of the compactor’s acceleration and the amplitude corresponding to the vibration frequency. Numerous experiments show that CMV is highly correlated with the pavement stiffness, but as of now, there is no convincing theoretical explanation for this correlation. In this paper, we provide a possible theoretical explanation for the empirical correlation. This explanation also explains why, the stiffer the material, the more higher-order harmonics we observe. 1 Compaction Meter Value (CMV) – An Empirical Measure of Pavement Stiffness Need to measure pavement stiffness. Road pavement must be stiff: the pavement must remain largely unchanged when heavy vehicles pass over it. To increase the pavement’s stiffness, pavement layers are usually compacted by the rolling compactors. In the cities, only non-vibrating compactors are used, to avoid human discomfort caused by vibration. However, in roads outside the city limits, vibrating compactors are used, to make compaction more efficient. In this paper, we will denote the vibration frequency by f . Compaction is applied both to the soil and to the stiffer additional pavement material that is usually placed on top of the original soil. To check whether we