The Integrated Road Research Facility (IRRF) was founded in 2012 through an innovative partnership between the University of Alberta, Alberta Transportation, Alberta Recycling, the City of Edmonton and Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The IRRF includes a fully instrumented test road, located approximately 15 km east of downtown Edmonton. The test road has three major test sections that focus on evaluation of: 1) two road embankment materials: Tire Derived Aggregate (TDA) made from Passenger-Light-Truck-Tire (PLTT) and Off-the-Road (OTR) tires and PLTT-soil mixture; 2) flexible pavement performance in cold-climate conditions; and 3) insulated pavement sections using polystyrene boards, bottom-ash and TDA. The test road is unique in Canada and more than 8,000 tonnes of recycled tires were used in the construction of the road. The test road was instrumented with more than 250 pavement and geotechnical instrumentation during construction. Geotechnical instrumentation is used to monitor the TDA sections’ compression behavior, internal temperature and drainage characteristics. Instrumentation in the insulation layer test section monitors temperature, moisture and frost penetration. Instrumentation in the pavement performance sections monitors the mechanistic responses of the pavement to both truck traffic and environmental conditions. This paper discusses details regarding the instrumentation design, installation procedure and data collection system for the three test sections. The results of Falling-Weight-Deflectometer (FWD) tests performed on finished subgrade for uniformity evaluation are also presented and discussed.
