Pavement Design

Requirements of a pavement
• Sufficient thickness to distribute the wheel load
stresses to a safe value on the sub-grade soil,
• Structurally strong to withstand all types of
stresses imposed upon it,
• Adequate coefficient of friction to prevent
skidding of vehicles,
• Smooth surface to provide comfort to road
users even at high speed,
 Requirements of a pavement

• Produce least noise from moving vehicles,

• Dust proof surface so that traffic safety is not
impaired by reducing visibility,
• Impervious surface, so that sub-grade soil is
well protected, and
• Long design life with low maintenance cost.
 Flexible Pavement
Typical layers of a flexible pavement
• Seal coat
– a thin surface treatment used to water-proof the surface
– provide skid resistance
• Tack coat
– provides proper bonding between two layer of binder course
– must be thin, uniformly cover the entire surface, and set very fast
• Prime coat
– is an application of low viscous cutback bitumen
– provides bonding between two layers
– penetrates into the layer below, plugs the voids, and forms a water tight
surface

Construction Audit 4
 Flexible Pavement
Typical layers of a flexible pavement
• Surface course
– layer directly in contact with traffic loads and generally contains
superior quality materials.
– constructed with dense graded asphalt concrete(AC).
– provides characteristics such as friction, smoothness, drainage, etc.
– prevent the entrance of excessive quantities of surface water into
the underlying base, sub-base and sub-grade
– resist the distortion under traffic and provide a smooth and skid-
resistant riding surface
– water proof to protect the entire base and sub-grade from the
weakening effect of water

Construction Audit 5
 Flexible Pavement
Typical layers of a flexible pavement
• Binder course layer
– provides the bulk of the asphalt concrete structure.
– purpose is to distribute load to the base course
– consists of aggregates having less asphalt and doesn't require quality as
high as the surface course,
• Base course
– the layer of material immediately beneath the surface of binder course
– provides additional load distribution and contributes to the sub-surface
drainage
– composed of crushed stone, crushed slag, and other untreated or
stabilized materials

Construction Audit 6
 Flexible Pavement
Typical layers of a flexible pavement
• Sub-base course
– the layer of material beneath the base course
– provide structural support, improve drainage and reduce the
intrusion of fines from the sub-grade in the pavement structure
– Open graded base course with more fines can serve as a filler
between sub-grade and base course
– A sub-base course is not always needed or used
• Sub-grade
– layer of natural soil prepared to receive the stresses from the
layers above
– compacted to the desirable density, near the optimum
moisture content
Construction Audit 7
 Types of pavements
• Rigid pavements
• Flexible pavements
 Types of pavements
Flexible pavements
• Conventional flexible pavements are layered
systems with high quality expensive materials are
placed in the top where stresses are high, and low
quality cheap materials are placed in lower layers.
• Full - depth asphalt pavements are constructed by
placing bituminous layers directly on the soil
subgrade. This is more suitable when there is high
traffic and local materials are not available.
 Types of pavements
Flexible pavements
• Contained rock asphalt mats are constructed
by placing dense/open graded aggregate
layers in between two asphalt layers. Modified
dense graded asphalt concrete is placed above
the sub-grade will signficantly reduce the
vertical compressive strain on soil sub-grade
and protect from surface water.
 Types of pavements
Rigid pavements
• Jointed Plain Concrete Pavement: are plain
cement concrete pavements constructed with
closely spaced contraction joints. Dowel bars
or aggregate interlocks are normally used for
load transfer across joints. They normally has
a joint spacing of 5 to 10m.
• Pre-stressed concrete pavement (PCP).
 Types of pavements
Rigid pavements
• Jointed Reinforced Concrete Pavement: Although
reinforcements do not improve the structural
capacity significantly, they can drastically increase
the joint spacing to 10 to 30m. Dowel bars are
required for load transfer. Reinforcements help to
keep the slab together even after cracks.
• Continuous Reinforced Concrete Pavement:
Complete elimination of joints are achieved by
reinforcement.
 Factors affecting pavement design
Traffic and loading
• Contact pressure: the contact area and the contact pressure between the wheel
and the pavement surface
• Wheel load: determines the depth of the pavement required to ensure that the
subgrade soil is not failed. Wheel configuration affect the stress distribution and
deflection within a pavement. The normal practice is to convert dual wheel into
an equivalent single wheel load so that the analysis is made simpler.
• Axle configuration: The load carrying capacity of the commercial vehicle is
further enhanced by the introduction of multiple axles.
• Moving loads: The damage to the pavement is much higher if the vehicle is
moving at creep speed. Many studies show that when the speed is increased
from 2 km/hr to 24 km/hr, the stresses and deflection reduced by 40 per cent.
• Repetition of Loads: The influence of traffic on pavement not only depend on
the magnitude of the wheel load, but also on the frequency of the load
applications
Factors affecting pavement design

• Material characterization
• Structural models
• Environmental factors
– Temperature
– Precipitation
 Pavement Design
• Two methods of flexible pavement structural
design:
– Empirical design and
– Mechanistic empirical design.
 Empirical design
An empirical approach is one which is:
• based on the results of experimentation or
experience.
• based on physical properties or strength
parameters of soil subgrade.
• An empirical analysis of flexible pavement
design can be done with or with out a soil
strength test.
 Mechanistic-Empirical Design
• Empirical-Mechanistic method of design is
• based on the mechanics of materials that relates input,
such as wheel load, to an output or pavement response.
• In pavement design, the responses are the stresses,
strains, and deflections within a pavement structure and
the physical causes are the loads and material properties
of the pavement structure.
• The relationship between these phenomena and their
physical causes are typically described using some
mathematical models
 Traffic and Loading
• Equivalent single wheel load (ESWL) is the single wheel
load having the same contact pressure, which produces
same value of maximum stress, deflection, tensile stress
or contact pressure at the desired depth.
• The procedure of finding the ESWL for equal stress
criteria is provided below with following assumptions:
– equalancy concept is based on equal stress;
– contact area is circular;
– influence angle is 45 degree
– soil medium is elastic, homogeneous, and isotropic half space.
Equivalent single wheel load (ESWL)
 Example
• Find ESWL at depths of 5cm, 20cm and 40cm
for a dual wheel carrying 2044 kg each. The
center to center tyre spacing is 20cm and
distance between the walls of the two tyres is
10cm.
 IRC method of design of flexible
pavements
• IRC:37-2001.
• Expressway, National Highways, State
Highways, Major District Roads, and other
categories of roads.
• Flexible pavements are considered to include
the pavements which have bituminous
surfacing and granular base and sub-base
courses conforming to IRC standards.