Detroit's freeze-thaw cycles tear up subgrades faster than most contractors expect. We see it every season in the lab when remolded samples from the city's east and west sides arrive with drastically different bearing capacities. The Afterberg limits of these glacial lake plain clays often dictate the entire pavement design, which is why we run them in parallel with every CBR schedule. A soaked CBR value from our Detroit facility gives you the worst-case scenario for spring thaw conditions, which is exactly what MDOT reviewers want to see in the project file. No one here relies on dry-only numbers.
Soaked CBR values from Detroit clays often drop below 3 percent after 96 hours of saturation. That single number changes the entire pavement section.
