Lectures of Highway

Engineering

SECOND TERM, SY 2021-2022

FRANKLYN T. AMISTAD, MSCE

Professor iV
College of engineering
University of northern Philippines
Highway engineering is an engineering discipline branching from civil
engineering that involves the planning, design, construction, operation,
and maintenance of roads, bridges, and tunnels to ensure safe and
effective transportation of people and goods.Highway engineering
became prominent towards the latter half of the 20th Century after World
War 2. Standards of highway engineering are continuously being
improved. Highway engineers must take into account future traffic flows,
design of highway intersections/interchanges, geometric alignment and
design, highway pavement materials and design, structural design of
pavement thickness, and pavement maintenance
History
The beginning of road construction could be dated to the time of the
Romans. With the advancement of technology from carriages pulled by two
horses to vehicles with power equivalent to 100 horses, road development
had to follow suit. The construction of modern highways did not begin until
the late 19th to early 20th century.
The first research dedicated to highway engineering was initiated in the
United Kingdom with the introduction of the Transport Research
Laboratory (TRL), in 1930.In the USA, highway engineering became an
important discipline with the passing of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of
1944, which aimed to connect 90% of cities with a population of 50,000 or
more. With constant stress from vehicles which grew larger as time passed,
improvements to pavement were needed. With technology out of date, in
1958 the construction of the first motorway in Great Britain (the Preston
bypass) played a major role in the development of new pavement
technology.
Design policies standards used in the United States are typically based on
publications of the American Association of State Highway and
Transportation Officials as well as research promulgated by
the Transportation Research Board, the Institute of Transportation
Engineers, the Federal Highway Administration, and the Department of
Transportation.
 Planning and development
Highway planning involves the estimation of current and future traffic
volumes on a road network. Highway engineers strive to predict and
analyze all possible civil impacts of highway systems. Some
considerations are the adverse effects on the environment, such as
noise pollution, air pollution, water pollution, and other ecological
impacts.

Financing
Developed countries are constantly faced with high maintenance cost of
aging transportation highways. The growth of the motor vehicle industry
and accompanying economic growth has generated a demand for safer,
better performing, less congested highways. The growth of commerce,
educational institutions, housing, and defense have largely drawn from
government budgets in the past, making the financing of public highways a
challenge.
The multipurpose characteristics of highways, economic environment, and
the advances in highway pricing technology are constantly changing.
Therefore, the approaches to highway financing, management, and
maintenance are constantly changing as well.
 Environmental impact assessment
The economic growth of a community is dependent upon highway
development to enhance mobility. However, improperly planned,
designed, constructed, and maintained highways can disrupt the
social and economic characteristics of any size community. Common
adverse impacts to highway development include damage of habitat
and bio-diversity, creation of air and water pollution, noise/vibration
generation, damage of natural landscape, and the destruction of a
community's social and cultural structure. Highway infrastructure
must be constructed and maintained to high qualities and standards.

There are three key steps for integrating environmental

considerations into the planning, scheduling, construction, and
maintenance of highways. This process is known as anEnvironmental
Impact Assessment, or EIA, as it systematically deals with the
following elements:
❖ Identification of the full range of possible impacts on the natural
and socio-economic environment
❖ Evaluation and quantification of these impacts
❖ Formulation of measures to avoid, mitigate, and compensate for
the anticipated impacts
 Highway safety
Highway systems generate the highest price in human injury and
death, as nearly 50 million persons are injured in traffic accidents
every year, not including the 1.2 million death. Road traffic injury is
the single leading cause of unintentional death in the first five
decades of human life.
Management of safety is a systematic process that strives to
reduce the occurrence and severity of traffic accidents. The
man/machine interaction with road traffic systems is unstable and
poses a challenge to highway safety management. The key for
increasing the safety of highway systems is to design, build, and
maintain them to be far more tolerant of the average range of this
man/machine interaction with highways. Technological
advancements in highway engineering have improved the design,
construction, and maintenance methods used over the years.
These advancements have allowed for newer highway safety
innovations.
By ensuring that all situations and opportunities are identified,
considered, and implemented as appropriate, they can be evaluated
in every phase of highway planning, design, construction,
maintenance, and operation to increase the safety of our highway
systems.
 Design
The most appropriate location, alignment, and shape of a highway
are selected during the design stage. Highway design involves the
consideration of three major factors (human, vehicular, and
roadway) and how these factors interact to provide a safe highway.
Human factors include reaction time for braking and steering, visual
acuity for traffic signs and signals, and car-following behaviour.
Vehicle considerations include vehicle size and dynamics that are
essential for determining lane width and maximum slopes, and for
the selection of design vehicles. Highway engineers design road
geometry to ensure stability of vehicles when negotiating curves
and grades and to provide adequate sight distances for undertaking
passing maneuvers along curves on two-lane, two-way roads.
 Geometric design
Highway and transportation engineers must meet many safety, service,
and performance standards when designing highways for certain site
topography. Highway geometric design primarily refers to the visible
elements of the highways. Highway engineers who design the geometry
of highways must also consider environmental and social effects of the
design on the surrounding infrastructure.
There are certain considerations that must be properly addressed in the
design process to successfully fit a highway to a site's topography and
maintain its safety. Some of these design considerations include:
❖ Design speed
❖ Design traffic volume
❖ Number of lanes
❖ Level of Service (LOS)
❖ Sight Distance
❖ Alignment, super-elevation, and grades
❖ Cross section
❖ Lane width
❖ Horizontal and vertical clearance
❖ The operational performance of a highway can be seen through
drivers’ reactions to the design considerations and their interaction.
 Materials

The materials used for roadway construction have progressed with time,
dating back to the early days of the Roman Empire. Advancements in
methods with which these materials are characterized and applied to
pavement structural design has accompanied this advancement in
materials.

There are two major types of pavement surfaces - Portland cement

concrete (PCC) and hot-mix asphalt (HMA). Underneath this wearing
course are material layers that give structural support for the pavement
system. These underlying surfaces may include either the aggregate
base and subbase layers, or treated base and subbase layers, and
additionally the underlying natural or treated subgrade. These treated
layers may be cement-treated, asphalt-treated, or lime-treated for
additional support
 Flexible pavement design
A flexible, or asphalt, or Tarmac pavement typically consists of three or four layers. For a four
layer flexible pavement, there is a surface course, base course, and subbase course
constructed over a compacted, natural soil subgrade. When building a three layer flexible
pavement, the subbase layer is not used and the base course is placed directly on the
natural subgrade.
A flexible pavement's surface layer is constructed of hot-mix asphalt (HMA).Unstabilized
aggregates are typically used for the base course; however, the base course could also be
stabilized with asphalt, Foamed Bitumen,<Roadstone Recycling> Portland cement, or
another stabilizing agent. The subbase is generally constructed from local aggregate
material, while the top of the subgrade is often stabilized with cement or lime.
With flexible pavement, the highest stress occurs at the surface and the stress decreases
as the depth of the pavement increases. Therefore, the highest quality material needs to be
used for the surface, while lower quality materials can be used as the depth of the
pavement increases. The term "flexible" is used because of the asphalts ability to bend and
deform slightly, then return to its original position as each traffic load is applied and
removed. It is possible for these small deformations to become permanent, which can lead
to rutting in the wheel path over an extended time.
The service life of a flexible pavement is typically designed in the range of 15 to 20
years.. Required thicknesses of each layer of a flexible pavement vary widely depending on
the materials used, magnitude, number of repetitions of traffic loads, environmental
conditions, and the desired service life of the pavement. Factors such as these are taken
into consideration during the design process so that the pavement will last for the designed
life without excessive distresses.
Rigid pavement design

Rigid pavements are generally used in constructing airports and major highways, such
as those in the interstate highway system. In addition, they commonly serve as heavy-
duty industrial floor slabs, port and harbor yard pavements, and heavy-vehicle park or
terminal pavements. Like flexible pavements, rigid highway pavements are designed
as all-weather, long-lasting structures to serve modern day high-speed traffic. Offering
high quality riding surfaces for safe vehicular travel, they function as structural layers
to distribute vehicular wheel loads in such a manner that the induced stresses
transmitted to the subgrade soil are of acceptable magnitudes.
Portland cement concrete (PCC) is the most common material used in the construction
of rigid pavement slabs. The reason for its popularity is due to its availability and the
economy. Rigid pavements must be designed to endure frequently repeated traffic
loadings. The typical designed service life of a rigid pavement is between 30 and 40
years, lasting about twice as long as a flexible pavement.
One major design consideration of rigid pavements is reducing fatigue failure due to
the repeated stresses of traffic. Fatigue failure is common among major roads because
a typical highway will experience millions of wheel passes throughout its service life. In
addition to design criteria such as traffic loadings, tensile stresses due to thermal
energy must also be taken into consideration. As pavement design has progressed,
many highway engineers have noted that thermally induced stresses in rigid
pavements can be just as intense as those imposed by wheel loadings. Due to the
relatively low tensile strength of concrete, thermal stresses are extremely important to
the design considerations of rigid pavements.
Rigid pavements are generally constructed in three layers - a prepared subgrade,
base or subbase, and a concrete slab. The concrete slab is constructed according
to a designed choice of plan dimensions for the slab panels, directly influencing
the intensity of thermal stresses occurring within the pavement. In addition to the
slab panels, temperature reinforcements must be designed to control cracking
behavior in the slab. Joint spacing is determined by the slab panel dimensions.
Three main types of concrete pavements commonly used are Jointed plain
concrete pavement (JPCP), jointed reinforced concrete pavement (JRCP), and
continuously reinforced concrete pavements (CRCP). JPCP’s are constructed with
contraction joints which direct the natural cracking of the pavement. These
pavements do not use any reinforcing steel. JRCP’s are constructed with both
contraction joints and reinforcing steel to control the cracking of the pavement.
High temperatures and moisture stresses within the pavement creates cracking,
which the reinforcing steel holds tightly together. At transverse joints, dowel bars
are typically placed to assist with transferring the load of the vehicle across the
cracking. CRCP’s solely rely on continuous reinforcing steel to hold the pavement’s
natural transverse cracks together. Prestressed concrete pavements have also
been used in the construction of highways; however, they are not as common as
the other three. Prestressed pavements allow for a thinner slab thickness by partly
or wholly neutralizing thermally induced stresses or loadings.
 Flexible pavement overlay design
Over the service life of a flexible pavement, accumulated traffic loads may cause excessive
rutting or cracking, inadequate ride quality, or an inadequate skid resistance. These
problems can be avoided by adequately maintaining the pavement, but the solution
usually has excessive maintenance costs, or the pavement may have an inadequate
structural capacity for the projected traffic loads.
Throughout a highway’s life, its level of serviceability is closely monitored and maintained.
One common method used to maintain a highway’s level of serviceability is to place an
overlay on the pavement’s surface.
There are three general types of overlay used on flexible pavements: asphalt-concrete
overlay, Portland cement concrete overlay, and ultra-thin Portland cement concrete overlay.
The concrete layer in a conventional PCC overlay is placed unbonded on top of the flexible
surface. The typical thickness of an ultra-thin PCC overlay is 4 inches (10 cm) or less.
There are three main categories of flexible pavement overlay design procedures:
➢ Component Analysis Design
➢ Deflection-Based Design
 Rigid pavement overlay design

Near the end of a rigid pavement's service life, a decision must be made to
either fully reconstruct the worn pavement, or construct an overlay layer.
Considering an overlay can be constructed on a rigid pavement that has not
reached the end of its service life, it is often more economically attractive to
apply overlay layers more frequently. The required overlay thickness for a
structurally sound rigid pavement is much smaller than for one that has
reached the end of its service life. Rigid and flexible overlays are both used for
rehabilitation of rigid pavements such as JPCP, JRCP, and CRCP.
There are three subcategories of rigid pavement overlays that are organized
depending on the bonding condition at the pavement overlay and existing slab
interface.
• Bonded overlays
• Un bonded overlays
▪ Partially bonded overlays
THANK YOU
AND
GOD BLESS