Pavement Engineering and Drainage

System

1. Introduction

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Code Subject Credit Evaluation Scheme Total
No. hours
Assessment Mid- Final
+ Term

Attendance
TRP Pavement
614.3 Engineering
and Drainage 3 30+10 20 40 100
System

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 Course outlines
• Introduction pavement structure and drainage system (4 hours)
• Stress and strain in flexible and rigid pavements (4 hours)
• Traffic characteristics (2 hours)
• Characterization of pavement and drainage materials (4 hours)
• Rainfall pattern, Glacial fed river flooding (2 hours)
• Surface and Sub-surface drainage (4 hours)
• Flexible pavement design (6 hours)
• Rigid pavement design (6 hours)
• Hot mix asphalt construction (2 hours)
• Rigid pavements constructions (2 hours)
• Highway drainage design (7 hours)
• Airport drainage design (8 hours) TOTAL 51 hours
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• Pavement performance
• Design of overlays Pavement Engineering 3
 Road Pavement
A relatively stable layer constructed over
the natural soil for the purpose of
supporting and distributing the wheel load
and providing an adequate surface for the
movement of the vehicles may be defined
as road pavement.

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 Object of pavements
• In order to provide a stable and even
surface for the traffic, the roadway is
provided with a suitably designed and
constructed pavement structure over a
prepared soil sub-grade to serve as a
carriageway.

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 Types of pavement structures
• Pavements have been divided into three broad
categories.
–Flexible pavement
–Rigid pavements
–Composite pavement

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 Flexible Pavement
• Structure
– Surface course
– Base course
– Subbase course
– Subgrade
 Rigid Pavement
• Structure
– Surface course
– Base course
– Subbase course
– Subgrade
• The flexible pavement may consist of a relatively
thin wearing surface built over a base course and
sub-base course, and they rest upon the
compacted sub grade.
• Rigid pavements are made up of Portland cement
concrete and may or may not have a base course
between the pavement and sub-grade.
• A composite Pavements is composed both HMA
and PCC. The use of PCC as a bottom layer and
HMA as a top layer results in an ideal pavement
with the most desirable characteristics.
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 Flexible Pavements
• There are three types of construction have
been used for flexible pavements:
– Conventional flexible pavements
– Full depth asphalt pavement
– Contained rock asphalt mat (CRAM)

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 1. Conventional flexible pavement
• Conventional flexible pavements are layered
system 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 the use of
local materials and usually results in a most
economical design.
• This is particularly true in regions where high
quality materials are expensive but local materials
of inferior quality are readily available.
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Typical cross section of a conventional flexible
pavement

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 Seal Coat
• Seal coat is a thin asphalt surface treatment
used :
– to waterproof the surface or
– to provide skid resistance where the
aggregates in the surface course may be
polished by traffic and become slippery.

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 Surface course
• The surface course is the top course of an asphalt
pavement, sometimes called the wearing course.
• It is usually constructed by dense graded HMA.
• It must be tough to resist distortion under traffic and
provide a smooth and skid resistant riding surface.
• It must be waterproof to protect the entire pavement
and sub-grade from the weakening effect of water.
• If the above requirements cannot be met, the use of a
seal coat is recommended.

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 Binder Course
• The binder course, sometimes called the asphalt base
course, is the asphalt layer below the surface course.
• There are two reasons that a binder course is used in
addition to the surface course.
– First the HMA is too thick to be compacted in one layer, so
it must be placed in two layers.
– Second, the binder course generally consists of larger
aggregates and less asphalt and does not require as high
a quality at the surface course, so replacing a part of the
surface course by the binder course results in a more
economical design.

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 Tack Coat
• A tack coat is a very light application of asphalt, used to
ensure a bond between the surface being paved and
the overlying courses.
• It is important that each layer in an asphalt pavement
be bonded to the layer below.
• Tack coat is also used to bond the asphalt layer to a
PCC base or an old asphalt pavement.
• The essential requirements of a tack coat are that it
must be very thin and it must uniformly cover the entire
surface to be paved.
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 Prime Coat
• A prime coat is an application of low viscosity cutback
asphalt to an absorbent surface, such as an untreated
granular base on which an asphalt layer will be placed.
• Its purpose is to bind the granular base to the asphalt
layer.
• The difference between a tack coat and a prime coat is
that the tack coat does not require the penetration of
asphalt into the underlying layer, while the prime coat
penetrates into the underlying layer, plugs the voids,
and forms a watertight surface.

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 Base course and Sub base course
• The base course is the layer of material
immediately beneath the surface or binder
course.
• It may be composed of crushed stone, crushed
slag or other untreated or stabilized materials.
• The sub base course is the layer of material
beneath the base course.
• The reason that two different granular materials
are used is for economy
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 Sub-grade
• The top 6 in. of sub-grade should be scarified
and compacted to the desirable density near
the optimum moisture content.
• This compacted sub-grade may be the in situ
soil or a layer of selected material.

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 2.Full- Depth Asphalt Pavements
• Full-depth asphalt pavements are constructed by placing
one or more layers of HMA directly on the sub grade or
improved sub grade.
• This concept was conceived by the Asphalt institute in
1960 and is generally considered the most cost effective
and dependable type of asphalt pavement for heavy traffic.
• This type of construction is quite popular in areas where
local materials are not available.
• It is more convenient to purchase only one material, i.e.,
HMA, rather than several materials from different sources,
thus minimizing the administration and equipment costs
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Typical cross section of a full depth
asphalt pavement

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 Advantages
(According to the AI)
• They have no permeable granular layers to entrap water
and impair performance.
• Time required for construction is reduced. On widening
projects, where adjacent traffic flow must usually be
maintained, full depth asphalt can be especially advantages.
• They provide and retain uniformity in the pavement structure
• They are less affected by moisture or frost
• According to limited studies, moisture contents do not built
up in sub-grades under full depth asphalt pavement
structures as they do under pavements with granular bases.
Thus there is little or no reduction in sub-grade strength.
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 3. Contained Rock Asphalt Mats
• Another type of construction is the contained
rock asphalt mat (CRAM), which is composed
of four layers.
• Starting from the bottom, a modified dense-
graded HMA layer is spread over a
conventionally prepared sub-grade, followed
by a layer of open-graded aggregate, then a
dense-graded aggregate, and finally a dense-
graded HMA wearing surface.
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Typical CRAM section

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 Benefits
• Benefits of the CRAM section include; controlling
surface water via the open graded aggregate
• preventing the contamination of aggregates by
the infiltration of sub-grade soils
• improving fatigue resistance of bottom asphalt
layer by the possible use of softer asphalt
• reducing crack propagation due to a more
favorable distribution of tensile stress and strain
in the surface layer.
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 Rigid Pavements
• Rigid pavements are constructed of Portland cement
concrete and should be analyzed by the plate theory,
instead of the layered theory.
• Plate theory assumes the concrete slab to be a
medium thick plate with a plane before bending and to
remain a plane after bending.
• In contrast to flexible pavements, rigid pavements are
placed either directly on the prepared sub-grade or on a
single layer of granular or stabilized material.
• Since there is only one layer of material under the
concrete slab and above the sub-grade, some call it a
base course while others call it a sub-base.
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Typical cross section of a rigid pavement

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 Use of base course
• The following reasons have been frequently
cited for using a base course
– Control of pumping
– Control of frost action
– Improvement of drainage
– Control of shrinkage and swell
– Expedition of construction

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 Types of Concrete Pavements
• Jointed Plain Concrete Pavements
• Jointed Reinforced Concrete Pavements
• Continuous Reinforced Concrete Pavements
• Pre- stressed Concrete Pavements

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 Pavement Design factors
• Design factors can be divided into four broad
categories:
– traffic and loading,
– environment,
– materials, and
– failure criteria.

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 Traffic and loading
• The traffic and loading to be considered include axle
loads, the number of load repetitions, tire contact areas
and vehicle speeds.
• a)Axle loads
– In many pavement design methods the total estimated or
projected magnitude and occurrence of the various traffic
loadings are converted into the total number of passes of
the equivalent standard axle loading:
• usually the equivalent 80kN single axle load (ESAL). The total
number of ESALs is used as the traffic loading input for design of
the pavement structure.
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 Traffic and loading….
b) Number of repetitions
– The deformation of pavement or sub-grade due to
a single application of wheel load may be small.
But due to repeated application of the load there
would be increased magnitude of plastic and
elastic deformation and the accumulated
uncovered or permanent deformations may even
result in pavement failure.

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 Traffic and loading….
• c) tire contact area.
– The size of contact area depends on the contact
pressure.
– The contact pressure is greater than the tire pressure for
low pressure tires, because the wall of tires is in
compression and the sum of vertical forces due to wall
and tire pressure must be equal to the force due to
contact pressure;
– The contact pressure is smaller than the tire pressure for
high pressure tires, because the wall of tires is in tension.
However, in pavement design the contact pressure is
generally assumed toPavement
be Engineering
equal to the tire pressure. 35
Contact Pressure & Tire Pressure

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 Contact Area
• Contact area is composed of a rectangle and
two semicircles.

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 Contact Area

By assuming length of L and a width of 0.6L, the area of

contact area:

In which Ac=contact area, which can be obtained by dividing the

load on each tire by the tire pressure
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d) Vehicle speed
– Speed is directly related to the duration of loading.

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 Environmental factor
• The environmental factors that influence pavement design
include temperature and precipitation, both affecting the
elastic moduli of the various layers.
a)Temperature

Effect on asphalt layer: Temperature affects the resilient modulus of

asphalt layers. During the winter when temperature is low, the
HMA becomes rigid and reduces the strains in the pavement.
Low temperature can cause asphalt pavement to crack.
• The effect of temperature on asphalt pavement is different from
that on concrete pavements.

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 Environmental factor…
Effect on Rigid Pavements: The temperature gradient in concrete
pavements creates the curling stress at the same time it affects the
slab-subgrade contact.
– During the day when the temperature at top is higher than that at
bottom, the slab curls down so that its interior may not be in
contact with the subgrade.
– At night time the temperature at top is lower than that at bottom,
the slab curls upward so that its edge and corner may be out of
contact with sub-grade. The loss of subgrade contact will affect the
stresses in concrete due to wheel loads.
– The change between maximum and minimum temperatures also
determines the joint and crack openings and affects the efficiency
of load transfer.
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 Environmental factor…
– In cold climates, the resilient moduli of unstablized
materials also vary with the freeze–thaw cycles.
– The severity of cold climate is indicated by the
freezing index, which can be correlated with the
depth of frost penetration.

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 Environmental factor…
• Frost penetration:
– Another effect of temperature on pavement design in cold climate is
the frost penetration, which results in a stronger subgrade in the
winter but a much weaker sub grade in the spring.
– Although frost heave causes differential settlements and pavement
roughness,
– The most detrimental effect of frost penetration occurs during the
spring breakup period when the ice melts and the subgrade is in a
saturated condition.
– It is desirable to protect the subgrade by using non-frost-susceptible
materials within the zone of frost penetration. If this cannot be done,
the design method should take into consideration the weakening of
subgrade during spring breakup.
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 Environmental factor…
• Freezing Index
The severity of frost in a given region can be expressed as a freezing index
in terms of degree days.
A negative one-degree day represents one day with a mean air
temperature one degree below freezing, while a positive one-degree day
indicates one day with a mean air temperature one degree above freezing.
If the mean air temperature is 250F on the first day and 220F on the second
and third days, the total degree days for the three day period are (25-32) +
2(22-32) = -27degree days.
The difference between the maximum and minimum points on the curve
during one year is called the freezing index for that year.
The freezing index has been correlated with the depth of frost penetration
and can be used as a factor of pavement design and evaluation.

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 Environmental factor…
• b). Precipitation
• The precipitation from rain and snow affects the
quantity of surface water infiltrating into the subgrade
and the location of the ground water table. If rain
water can be drained out within a short time, its effect
can be minimized, even in regions of high
precipitation.
• The location of the ground water table is also
important. The water table should be kept at least 3
ft. below the pavement surface.
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• Example:
• The monthly degree day data are:
Sep=540, Oct=-130, Nov=-450,Dec=-770,
Jan=-540, Feb=450, March=-290, April=-70,
May=170 . Calculate the freezing index.

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 Month Monthly Cumulative
September 540 540
October -130 410
November -450 -40
December -770 -810
January -540 -1350
February -450 -1800
March -290 -2090
April -70 -2160
May 170 -1990

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 Materials
• In mechanistic-empirical methods of design, the properties of
materials must be specified, so that the response of pavement,
such as stresses, strain and displacements in the critical
components can be determined.
• The following general material properties should be specified for
both flexible and rigid pavements:
– When pavements are considered as linear elastic, the elastic moduli and
Poisson’s ratios of the subgrade and each component layer must be
specified.
– If the elastic modulus of material varies with the time of loading, the
resilient modulus, which is the elastic modulus under repeated loads,
must be selected in accordance with a load duration corresponding to
the vehicle speed.
– When a material is considered nonlinear elastic, the constitutive equation
relating the resilient modulus to the state of stress must be provided.
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 Failure criteria
• In the mechanistic-empirical methods of
pavement design, a number of failure criteria,
each directed to a specific type of distress,
must be established. In contrast to the
AASHTO method present serviceability index
(PSI), which indicates the general pavement
conditions is used.

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