HIGHWAY II

HIGHWAY II - Inroduction March, 2010

 CHAPTER 1
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INTRODUCTION

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 Introduction
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Contents:
 General
 Overview of pavement structures
 Flexible pavements
 Rigid pavements

 Basic design data

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 General
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 The field of pavement design is dynamic,

 The concepts are changing with time as technology
develops and new equipment emerges for site
investigation, material and traffic data collection,
and new data become available.
 Observing the performances of the already
constructed roads, highway engineers become aware
that pavement performance is dependent on the
subgrade soils.
 With the knowledge of soil mechanics, pavement
design was made with soil classification.

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 General Cont’d
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 Increase in traffic
 usage and development necessitated a
of heavy transport means more rational
 Deterioration of approach of
pavements due to trucks design.
and aircrafts

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 General Cont’d
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 This led to full-scale and laboratory experiments in

different countries at different capacities.
 Results of laboratory experiments conducted under
varying soil, climatic, and loading conditions in
different countries have given rise to understanding
and development of the existing design methods.

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 General Cont’d
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 Principles of pavement design are common to all

problems and localities,
 Different highway agencies in different countries use
different design manuals prepared to suite
 their local conditions and
 available materials of construction.

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 Overview Cont’d
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 The basic idea in building a pavement for all-weather

use by vehicles is to prepare a suitable sub grade,
provide necessary drainage and construct a
pavement that will:
 Have sufficient total thickness and internal strength to carry
expected traffic loads, and distribute them over the sub grade
soil without overstressing.
 Have adequate properties to prevent or minimize the
penetration or internal accumulation of moisture, and
 Have 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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 Overview Cont’d
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 The functional requirements of pavements are

achieved through careful considerations of:
 selection of pavement type,
 selection of materials to be used for various pavement layers
and treatment of subgrade soils,
 structural thickness design for pavement layers,
 subsurface drainage design for the pavement system,
 surface drainage and geometric design, and
 ridability of pavement surface.

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 Overview Cont’d
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 EARTH ROADS
 Designed for a very low traffic where the soil can be trafficable

 Used when there is economic limitation

 The natural sub grade soil can be made to carry the traffic load
after clearing and shaping
 Such earth roads give seasonal services and

 Require reshaping after seasonal changes.

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 Overview Cont’d
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 GRAVEL ROADS
 Better than earth roads,

 Constructed by spreading gravel over the subgrade, shaping

and compacting to avoid excessive strain at the sub grade level
 Usually provides services in all seasons with less frequent
reshaping as compared to earth roads.
 Designed to carry low to medium traffic & serve as stage
construction.
 The surface material should be kept to certain standard such as
grading and plasticity.

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 Overview Cont’d
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 Pavements are generally classified into two

categories,
 Flexible pavements
 Rigid pavements.
 The basis for classification is the way by which traffic
loads are transmitted to the subgrade soil through
the pavement structure.

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 Flexible Pavements
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 Provides sufficient thickness for load distribution

through a multilayer structure
 the stresses & strains in the subgrade soil layers are
within the required limits.
 the strength of subgrade soil would have a direct
bearing on the total thickness of the flexible
pavement.
 Designed to take advantage of the decreasing
magnitude of stresses with depth.

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 Flexible Pavements
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 Flexible Pavements
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 It has low flexural strength and the load is largely

transmitted to the sub grade soil through the lateral
distribution of stresses with increasing depth.
 The pavement thickness is designed such that
stresses on the subgrade soil are kept within its
bearing capacity and the sub grade is prevented from
excessive deformation.
 Its structural strength and smoothness depends to a
large extent on the deformation of the subgrade soil.

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 Flexible Pavement
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 Flexible Pavements
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 Flexible Pavement Typical Applications

 Traffic lanes

 Auxiliary lanes

 Ramps

 Parking areas

 Frontage roads

 Shoulders

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 Flexible Pavements
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 Advantages to Flexible Pavement

 Adjusts to limited differential settlement
 Easily repaired
 Additional thickness added any time
 Non-skid properties do not deteriorate
 Quieter and smoother
 Tolerates a greater range of temperatures

 Disadvantages to Flexible Pavement

 Loses some flexibility and cohesion with time
 Needs resurfacing sooner than PC concrete
 Not normally chosen where water is expected

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 Flexible Pavements
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 Generally, two types of construction have been used

for flexible pavements,
 conventional flexible pavement and
 full-depth asphalt pavement.

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 Conventional Flexible Pavements
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 Conventional flexible pavements are multilayered

structures with
 better materials on top where the intensity of stress is high and
 inferior materials at the bottom where the intensity is low.
 This design principle makes possible to use local
materials and usually results in a most economical
design.

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 Conventional Flexible Pavements
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 A conventional pavement
normally consists of seal
coat, surface course, tack
coat, prime coat, base
course, sub base course,
compacted subgrade, and
natural subgrade.
 The use of various courses is
based on either necessity or
economy and some of the
courses may be omitted.

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 Conventional Flexible Pavements
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 Surface course: -
 The surface course is the top course of an asphalt pavement,

 sometimes called wearing course.

 It is usually constructed by dense graded hot asphalt mix.

 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.

 The surface must be waterproof

 to protect the entire pavement and
 subgrade from the weakening effect of water.

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 Conventional Flexible Pavements
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 Base course: -
 The base course is the layer of material immediately beneath
the surface course.
 It may be composed of well-graded crushed stone
(unbounded), granular 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 over the sub grade, it prevents intrusions if the
fine subgrade soils into the pavement structure.

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 Conventional Flexible Pavements
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 Sub base course: -

 It 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 in
distributing the load.
 It facilitates drainage of free water that might get accumulated
below the pavement.
 If the base course is open graded, the sub base course with
more fines can serve as a filter between the sub grade and the
base course.

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 Conventional Flexible Pavements
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 Sub grade: -
 It 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
properly drained desirable and compacted to receive the
pavement layers.

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 Full- depth asphalt pavements
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 are constructed by placing one or more layers of hot-

mix asphalt directly on the sub grade or improved
sub grade.
 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 area where local materials are not available

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 Rigid Pavements
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 Are constructed of cement concrete slabs

 A rigid pavement, by virtue of its rigidity, can be able to
effect a slab action to spread the wheel load over the
entire slab area.
 The structural capacity of the rigid pavement is largely
provided by the slab itself.
 For the common range of subgrade soil strength, the
required rigidity for a Portland cement concrete slab can
be achieved without much variation in slab thickness.
 The effect of subgrade soil properties on the thickness of
rigid pavement is less important than that of flexible pvt.

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 Rigid pavements
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 Rigid pavements
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 The flexural strength also permits the slab to bridge

over minor irregularities under it.
 Thus, the performance of rigid pavements is more
governed by the strength of the concrete slab that the
subgrade supports.
 Hence the major factor considered in the design of
pavement is the structural strength of the concrete.

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 Rigid pavements
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 Rigid Pavement Typical Applications

 High volume traffic lanes

 Freeway to freeway connections

 Exit ramps with heavy traffic

 Advantages of Rigid Pavement

 Good durability

 Long service life

 Withstand repeated flooding and subsurface water without

deterioration

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 Rigid pavements
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 Disadvantages of Rigid Pavement

 May lose non-skid surface with time

 Needs even sub-grade with uniform settling

 May fault at transverse joints

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 Rigid pavements
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 The subgrade may provide a uniform support for the slab.

 However where the sub grade soil cannot provide a uniform
support, there is always a necessity to build a base or
subbase course under cement concrete slab.

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 Rigid pavements
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 Main reasons for providing base course under

cement concrete slab are:
 Control of pumping: -
 Pumping is defined as the ejection of water and subgrade
soil through joints, cracks, and along the edges of the
pavements.
 Pumping occurs when there is void space under the slab
due to temperature curling of the slab, deformation of the
subgrade or both and erodible material under the slab is
saturated.
 It leads to faulting and cracking of the slab if not
corrected in time.

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 Rigid pavements
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 Control of frost action: -

 Heave caused by increase in volume of freezed water and
the formation and continuing expansion of ice lenses
causes the concrete slab to break and soften the subgrade
during frost melting period.
 This occurs when the soil within the depth of frost
penetration is frost susceptible (e.g. clay), there is a
supply of moisture and the temperature freezes for a
sufficient period of time.

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 Rigid pavements
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 Improvement of drainage: -
 when the water table is high and close to the ground surface, a
base course can raise the pavement to a desirable elevation
above the water table.
 An open graded base course provides an internal drainage
system capable of rapidly removing water that seeps through
pavement cracks and joints carry it away to the roadside.
 Dense-graded or stabilized base courses can also serve as
waterproofing layer.

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 Rigid pavements
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 Control of shrinkage and swell: -

 When the change in moisture causes subgrade to shrink or
swell, the base course can serve as a surcharge load to reduce
the amount of shrinkage and swell in addition to its use of
improving drainage.
 Measures that are taken to reduce entering water in to the
subgrade further reduce the shrinkage and swell potentials.
 As working platform for construction: -
 A base course can be used as a working platform for heavy
construction equipment.
 Under severe weather conditions a base course can keep the
surface clean and dry and facilitate the construction work.

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 Types of concrete pavement
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 Concrete pavements can be classified in to four

types:
 Jointed Plain Concrete Pavement (JPCP),
 Jointed Reinforced Concrete Pavement (JRCP),
 Continuous Reinforced Concrete Pavement (CRCP), and
 Pre-stressed Concrete Pavement (PCP).

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 Rigid pavements
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 Types of concrete pavement
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 In Jointed Unreinforced Concrete Pavements

(JUCP),
 the pavement consists in an unreinforced concrete slab cast in
place continuously and divided into bays of predetermined
dimensions by the construction of joints.
 The bays dimensions are made sufficiently short so as to
ensure that they do not crack.
 The bays are linked together by tie bars, which is to prevent
horizontal movement and thus ensure load transfer through
aggregate interlock.

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 Types of concrete pavement
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 Jointed Unreinforced Concrete Pavements (JUCP),

Joints accommodate shrinkage during drying.

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 Types of concrete pavement
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 In Jointed Reinforced Concrete Pavements (JRCP)

 the pavement consists generally in a cast in place concrete slab
divided in reinforced concrete bays separated by joints.
 The reinforcement is made to prevent developing cracks from
opening.
 The bays are linked together by tie bars to prevent horizontal
movement and thus ensure load transfer through aggregate
interlock.
 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 concrete pavement
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 Continuously Reinforced Concrete Pavements

(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.
 The expansion and contraction movements are prevented by a
high level of sub-base restraint.
 The frequent transverse cracks are held tightly closed by a
large amount of continuous high tensile steel longitudinal
reinforcement.

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 Types of concrete pavement
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 Continuously Reinforced Concrete Pavements

(CRCP)

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 Types of concrete pavement
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 The prestressed concrete pavements

 have less probability of cracking and fewer transverse joints
and therefore result in less maintenance and longer pavement
life.
 has been used more frequently for airport pavements than for
highway pavements because the saving in thickness for airport
pavements is much greater than that for highway pavements.

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 Composite pavements
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 Composite pavements are pavements composed of

cement concrete as a bottom layer and hot-mix asphalt as
a top layer to obtain an ideal pavement with the most
desirable characteristics.
 The cement concrete slab provides a strong base and the
hot-mix asphalt provides a smooth and non-reflective
surface.
 However, this type of pavement is very expensive and is
rarely used as a new construction.
 Composite pavements include rehabilitated concrete
pavements using asphalt overlays and asphalt pavements
with stabilized bases.

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 Composite pavements
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 For flexible pavements with untreated bases,

 the most critical tensile stress or strain is at the bottom of
asphalt layer,
 while for composite pavements the most critical location is at
the bottom of the cement concrete slab or stabilized bases.
 A disadvantage of this construction is the occurrence
of reflection cracks on the asphalt surface due to the
joints and cracks in the rigid base layer.

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Comparison of Rigid and Flexible pavements
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 The following main differences between rigid and

flexible pavements can be cited.
 The manner in which vehicle loads are transmitted to subgrade
 Design life and precision
 Maintenance requirements
 Initial cost
 Suitability for stage construction
 Surface characteristics
 Permeability and
 Traffic dislocation during construction.

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 Highway and Airport Pavement
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 Airport pavements are generally thicker than

highway pavements and require better surfacing
materials due to:
 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 much lesser
than that of airport pavements

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 Highway and Airport Pavement
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 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
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 Design factors can be divided into four broad

categories:
 traffic loading,
 environment,
 materials and
 failure criteria.

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 Traffic loading
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 The loading applied by traffic is one of the major

factors affecting the design and performance of
pavements.
 The most important aspects of traffic loading that
are considered in the analysis and design of
pavements are:
 The configuration,
 magnitude and
 repetitions of axle loads

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 Traffic loading
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 The principal function of pavement structure is to protect

the sub grade from the loading imposed by traffic.
 The magnitude of maximum loading is commonly
controlled by legal load limits.
 Traffic surveys and loadometer studies are often used to
establish the relative magnitude and occurrence of
various loadings to which a pavement is subjected.
 Prediction or estimation of the total traffic that will use a
pavement during its design life is a very difficult but
obviously important task.

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 Axle-loads and configurations
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 Single Axle Single Tire o o

 Singe Axle Dual Tires oo oo

 Tandem Axle Dual Tires oo oo

oo oo

 Tridem Axle Dual Tires oo oo

(Special heavy duty oo oo
haul trucks) oo oo
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 Axle-loads and configurations
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 Small vehicles use single axles with single wheels.

 Larger vehicles mostly have either duel wheels or single
wheels with ‘super-single’ tyres at each end of the non-
steer single axles; still larger vehicles may have tandem
or multiple axles arrangements in which the successive
axle are closely adjacent to one another.
 The larger aircraft use quite complicated wheel
arrangements because the weight of the aircraft has
usually to be transmitted through two undercarriage legs,
and many wheels are necessary are necessary to obtain a
reasonably low individual wheel load.

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 Type pressure
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 Mostly, it is only the commercial vehicle that is

important in structural pavement design and a
typical tyre pressure would be 0.5 MN/m2.
 Aircraft tyres use pressures up to nearly 3.0 MN/m2
which can cause serious problem in the design of the
materials employed in the upper layers of the
pavement.

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 Type pressure
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 The approximate shape of contact area for each tyre,

which is composed of a rectangle and two semicircles
with the dimensions.
 Based on the finite element analysis of rigid
pavements, a rectangular contact area is also
assumed with a length of 0.8712L and a width of
0.6L, which has the same area of 0.5227L2.

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 Number of repetitions
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 A succession of loads has a cumulative effect on the

behavior of pavements.
 It is therefore necessary to design the pavement for a
specified number of years and to estimate the total
number and magnitude of loads that will be applied
during the periods specified.
 A widely accepted procedure of considering traffic
load is the use of equivalent factor and converts each
load into an equivalent 80KN single axle load.

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 Speed of traffic loading
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 Studies showed that the stresses and deflections tend to

decrease as the vehicle speed increases.
 Speed is directly used as the duration of loading on
pavements.
 Generally, the greater the speed is, the larger the
modulus and the smaller the strains in the pavement.
 Because of this, for a given volume of traffic, greater
thickness and quality of paving materials are required for
pavements in urban areas than those in rural areas.
 Similarly, such requirements are considered for uphill
roads and bus stop.

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 Environment
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 The environmental factors that influence pavement

design include
 temperature and
 precipitation.
 Different standards of pavement design consider the
effects of these factors in various ways.

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 Temperatures
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 Softens AC in warm weather and hardens in cold

weather (cold  reduced strains but shorter fatigue
lives).
 Temperature gradient in PCC slabs affects curling
and slab-soil contact area.
 Frost penetration
- Frost Heave  differential settlements and
roughness.
- Spring thaw  saturated subgrade becomes weak
(most detrimental state).
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 Precipitation
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 Precipitation is important in the design, construction

and performance of roads in three main aspects:
 The construction of earth works
 Strength of pavement structure
 Surface water drainage

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 Precipitation
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 Affects quantity of water infiltrating into subgrade

and location of groundwater table.
 Weakens layers.
 Shorter drainage time  less HMA moisture
damage.
 Drainage layers are used in may areas to solve
precipitation problems.

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 Materials
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 Pavement materials include soils, aggregates,

bituminous binders and cement.
 The properties of these materials under traffic
loading in a given environmental conditions is
fundamental for the proper design of pavement
structures.
 Moreover, if economically constructed facilities are
to be obtained, locally available materials are to be
used efficiently.

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 Materials Properties
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 Stiffness - time, temperature, moisture effects (pre-

failure properties)
 Poison Ratio (relatively small effect on pavement
responses)
 Strength - time, temperature, moisture effects
(Failure properties: cracking, fatigue, permanent
deformation)
 Durability
 Permeability
 Thermal-Volumetric Properties

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 Materials Properties
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 Types of Material Behavior

Elastic - recoverable, time independent
 Plastic - non-recoverable, time independent
 Viscous - non-recoverable, time dependent
 Combination Visco-elastic - recoverable, time dependent
 Pavement Materials
1. PCC
2. Soils/Granular Materials
3. Stabilized Soils
4. HMA
5. Liquid Asphalts

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 Performance and Failure Criteria
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 Pavements are normally designed and constructed to

provide, during the design life, a riding quality
acceptable for both private and commercial vehicles
with acceptable maintenance.

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 Performance and Failure Criteria
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 Distress Types in Flexible Pavements

 Fatigue Cracking is based on the horizontal tensile strain at
the bottom of HMA (relates to the allowable number of load
repetitions).
 Rutting in surface layer is the permanent deformation or rut
depth along the wheel paths.
 Rutting due to sub-surface layers is mainly due to decrease
in thickness of the component layers above the subgrade.
 Thermal cracking occurs in locations where winter
temperature falls below –10 °F. Pavement will crack when
thermal stress is greater than the fracture strength.
 Thermal fatigue cracking is caused by tensile strain in the
asphalt layer due to daily temperature cycle.

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 Performance and Failure Criteria
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 Distress Types in Rigid Pavements

 Fatigue cracking is most likely caused by the edge
stress at the mid-slab. Allowable load repetitions
depend on the stress ratio between flexural tensile
stress and the concrete modulus of rupture.
 Pumping or erosion is caused by the resilient
deformation under repeated wheel loads.
 Faulting, Spalling, and Joint deterioration are
major types of distress in rigid pavement.

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 Performance and Failure Criteria
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 Gravel Roads defects include:

 Distress

 Potholes

 Corrugation

 Rutting

 Raveling

 Erosion

 Loss of wearing course material

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 Performance and Failure Criteria
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 Cracks in wheel tracks

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 Performance and Failure Criteria
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 Longitudinal and alligator cracking in the Wheel

path.

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 Performance and Failure Criteria
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 Cracking observed on a narrow polder road

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 Performance and Failure Criteria
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 reflective cracking in jointed concrete pavement

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 Performance and Failure Criteria
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 Low temperature cracking observed on a highway

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 Performance and Failure Criteria
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 Roughness due to potholes due to severe cracking

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 Performance and Failure Criteria
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 Rutting in an asphalt pavement

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 THANK YOU

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