CHAPTER 1
Instructor: Asres Simeneh
[Link]@[Link]/[Link]
Outline of chapter one
General
Overview of pavement structures
Flexible Pavements
Rigid Pavements
Basic design data
Introduction
Traffic
Climate
Pavement
Structure
Material
Properties
3.
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Pavement
condition
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Introduction
General
The field of pavement design is dynamic & the
concepts are changing with time as
technology develops and new equipment
emerges for site investigation, material testing
and traffic data collection, and new data become
available.
The evolution of
highway pavement design
Rule-of-thumb procedure
Pavements constructed over plastic soils
showed higher distress than those
constructed over granular deposits.
highway engineers became aware that
pavement Performance is dependent
on the subgrade soils.
The deterioration of pavements due to
heavy trucks and aircrafts necessitated
a more rational approach of design.
This led to full-scale and laboratory
experiments in different countries
at different capacities.
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Introduction
Overview of Pavement Structures
A pavement structure is a layer structure which supports the vehicle load on its surface
and transfers and spreads the load to the subgrade.
The basic idea in building a pavement for all-weather use by vehicles will have:
Sufficient total thickness and internal strength to carry expected traffic loads, and
distribute them over the subgrade soil without overstressing.
Adequate properties to prevent or minimize the penetration or internal
accumulation of moisture; and
A surface that is reasonably smooth and skid resistant at the same time, as well as
reasonably resistant to wear, distortion and deterioration by vehicle loads and
weather.
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Introduction
Types of pavements:
Earth Roads
Gravel Surfaced Roads
Flexible Pavements
Rigid Pavements
Earth Road
Used for a very low traffic where the soil
can be trafficable and when there is
economic limitation.
The natural subgrade soil can be made to
carry the traffic load after clearing and
shaping.
Give seasonal services and require reshaping
after seasonal changes.
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Gravel surfaced roads
Constructed by spreading gravel over the subgrade,
shaping and compacting to avoid excessive strain at the
subgrade level and to give services usually in all seasons.
In the case of gravel-surfaced roads, reshaping is
necessary, but not as frequent as in earth roads.
Mostly designed to carry low to medium traffic and
serve as stage construction. The surface material
should be kept to a certain standard such as grading
and plasticity.
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Flexible Pavement
Are multi-layered structures with better materials on top where the intensity of stress
is high and inferior materials at the bottom where the intensity is low.
A flexible pavement has low flexural strength, and the load is largely transmitted to
the subgrade soil through the lateral distribution of stresses with increasing
depth.
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Flexible Pavement (Contd)
Types of flexible pavement constructions
Conventional flexible pavement,
Full-depth asphalt pavement, and
Contained rock asphalt mat (CRAM) construction (which is still
in the experimental stage and has not been widely accepted for
practical use).
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Flexible Pavement (Contd)
Conventional flexible pavements
Are multi-layered structures.
Starting from the top, a conventional
flexible pavement normally consists of
Surface course
Base course
Sub-base course
Compacted subgrade and natural
subgrade.
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Surface Course
Top course of an asphalt pavement, sometimes called the wearing course.
usually constructed by dense graded hot-mix asphalt and It is a structural part
of the pavement, which must be tough to resist distortion under traffic and
provide a smooth and skid-resistant riding surface.
Base Course
It is the layer immediately beneath the surface course.
It may be composed of well-graded crushed stone (unbounded), granular
material mixed with binder, or stabilized materials.
It is the main structural part of the pavement and provides a level surface for
laying the surface layer. If constructed directly over the subgrade, it prevents
intrusions of the fine subgrade soils into the pavement structure.
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Sub-base Course
The sub-base course is the layer of material beneath the base course constructed
using local and cheaper materials for economic reason on top of the subgrade.
It provides additional help to the base and the upper layers in distributing the load. It
facilitates drainage of free water that might get accumulated below the pavement.
Subgrade
Subgrade is the foundation on which the vehicle load and the weight of the
pavement layers finally rest.
It is an in situ or a layer of selected material compacted to the desirable density near
the optimum moisture content. It is graded into a proper shape, properly drained,
and compacted to receive the pavement layers.
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Flexible Pavement (Contd)
Full-depth asphalt pavements
Are constructed by placing one or more layers of hotmix asphalt directly on the subgrade or improved
subgrade.
This concept was conceived by the Asphalt Institute and
is generally considered the most cost-effective and
dependable type of asphalt pavement for heavy
traffic and quite popular in areas where local materials
are not available.
Asphalt Surface
Asphalt Base
Subgrade
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Flexible Pavement (Contd)
Contained rock asphalt mat (CRAM)
Are constructed by placing dense/open graded aggregate layers
in between two asphalt layers.
Modified dense graded asphalt concrete is placed above the subgrade will significantly reduce the vertical compressive strain on
soil sub-grade and protect from surface water.
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Rigid Pavements
Constructed from cement concrete slabs.
Have a good flexural strength or beam strength
due to high modulus of elasticity.
High flexural strength permits the vehicle load on
cement concrete slab to be distributed over a
relatively wider area and to bridge over minor
irregularities of the soil than flexible pavements
and thus, variation in the subgrade soil strength has
little influence.
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Rigid Pavements (Contd)
There is always a necessity to build a base course under cement
concrete slab where the sub-grade soil cannot provide a uniform support,
or for one or more of the following reasons:
Control of pumping
Control of frost action
Improvement of drainage
Control of shrinkage and swell
Expedition of Construction.
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Types of Rigid Pavements
Jointed plain concrete pavement (JPCP):
plain concrete pavements constructed with
closely spaced contraction joints. Dowels or
aggregate interlocks may be used for load
transfer across the joints.
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Jointed reinforced concrete pavement (JRCP):
Concrete pavements with steel reinforcements in
the form of wire mesh or deformed bars
mainly to allow the use of longer joint spacing
but do not increase the structural capacity of
pavements.
Because of the longer panel length, dowels are
required for load transfer across the joints.
The amount of distributed steel increases with the
increase in joint spacing and is designed to hold the
slab together after cracking.
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Types of Rigid Pavements (Contd)
Continuous reinforced concrete
pavement (CRCP)
Are reinforced concrete pavements
designed joint-free for the purpose of
eliminating joints, which are the weak
spots in rigid pavements.
The elimination of joints would decrease
the thickness of pavement required.
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Types of Rigid Pavements (Contd)
Pre stressed concrete pavement (PCP)
The pre application of a compressive stress to the concrete to greatly
reduce the tensile stress caused by the traffic loads and thus decreases
the thickness of concrete required.
The pre stressed concrete pavements have less probability of cracking
and fewer transverse joints and therefore result in less maintenance
and longer pavement life.
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Types of Rigid Pavements
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Introduction
Comparison of Rigid and Flexible Pavements
The manner in which vehicle loads are
transmitted to the subgrade soil,
Design precision.
Design life.
Maintenance requirements.
Initial cost.
Suitability for stage construction.
Surface characteristics.
Permeability and
Traffic dislocation during construction.
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Highway and Airport Pavements
The gross-weight of an airplane is usually greater than
that of a heavy truck, but the number of load
repetitions on airport pavements is usually smaller than
that on highway pavements.
The arrangement and spacing of wheel loads on
airport and highway pavements are different.
A typical tyre pressure on highway pavements is in the
vicinity of 0.5 MPa while aircrafts use a tyre pressure up
to 3 MPa which is an important factor in the design of
the materials in the upper layer of the pavements.
6 tires
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Highway and Airport Pavements (contd)
Vehicle loads are applied near to the edge of highway pavements but
far away from the outside edge of airport pavements.
Unlike highway pavements, airfield pavements are subjected to an
impact loading.
The design load of airport pavements is the wheel load of the largest
aircraft during takeoff time due to heavy fuel weight.
Although wheel loads can be used as design loads, number of
repetitions of standard axles is the commonly used design parameter
for highway pavements.
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Basic Design Factors
Traffic Loading:
Loading configuration;
Number of repetitions;
Tyre pressure; and
Speed of traffic loading
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Basic Design Factors (Contd)
Environment:
Temperature,
Flexible pavement elastic/visco-elastic properties of bituminous materials
Rigid pavement warping/curling stresses
Frost in the sub-grade - heave and stronger subgrade in the winter but a
much weaker subgrade in the spring
Precipitation
Water requirement during construction;
Strength of pavement structure; and
Surface water drainage.
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Basic Design Factors (contd.)
Materials:
Properties of soils, aggregates, bituminous binders, cement, and their mixtures under
traffic loading in a given environmental conditions is fundamental for designing a
sound pavement structure
Performance and Failure Criteria:
Gravel roads defects include: dustiness, potholes, stoniness, corrugations, ruts,
cracks, ravelling, erosion, slipperiness, impassibility and loss of wearing course
material function of properties of materials of construction, alignment, volume of
traffic, and etc.
Flexible pavement fatigue cracking ; rutting; and thermal cracking
Rigid pavement - fatigue cracking; pumping ; and joint deterioration
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Thank you
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