Transportation Engineering 1

Introduction to pavement design

Overview

A highway pavement is a structure consisting of superimposed layers of processed materials

above the natural soil sub-grade, whose primary function is to distribute the applied vehicle loads
to the sub-grade. The pavement structure should be able to provide a surface of acceptable riding
quality, adequate skid resistance, favorable light reflecting characteristics, and low noise
pollution. The ultimate aim is to ensure that the transmitted stresses due to wheel load are
sufficiently reduced, so that they will not exceed bearing capacity of the sub-grade. Two types of
pavements are generally recognized as serving this purpose, namely flexible pavements and rigid
pavements. This chapter gives an overview of pavement types, layers, and their functions, and
pavement failures. Improper design of pavements leads to early failure of pavements affecting
the riding quality.

Requirements of a pavement

An ideal pavement should meet the following requirements:

• 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,
• 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.

Types of pavements

The pavements can be classified based on the structural performance into two, flexible
pavements and rigid pavements. In flexible pavements, wheel loads are transferred by grain-to-
grain contact of the aggregate through the granular structure. The flexible pavement, having less
flexural strength, acts like a flexible sheet (e.g. bituminous road). On the contrary, in rigid
pavements, wheel loads are transferred to sub-grade soil by flexural strength of the pavement and
the pavement acts like a rigid plate (e.g. cement concrete roads). In addition to these, composite
pavements are also available. A thin layer of flexible pavement over rigid pavement is an ideal
pavement with most desirable characteristics. However, such pavements are rarely used in new
construction because of high cost and complex analysis required.
Flexible pavements

Flexible pavements will transmit wheel load stresses to the lower layers by grain-to-grain
transfer through the points of contact in the granular structure (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Load transfer in granular structure

Deflection on flexible pavement

The wheel load acting on the pavement will be distributed to a wider area, and the stress
decreases with the depth. Taking advantage of this stress distribution characteristic, flexible
pavements normally has many layers. Hence, the design of flexible pavement uses the concept of
layered system. Based on this, flexible pavement may be constructed in a number of layers and
the top layer has to be of best quality to sustain maximum compressive stress, in addition to wear
and tear. The lower layers will experience lesser magnitude of stress and low quality material can
be used. Flexible pavements are constructed using bituminous materials. These can be either in
the form of surface treatments (such as bituminous surface treatments generally found on low
volume roads) or, asphalt concrete surface courses (generally used on high volume roads such as
national highways). Flexible pavement layers reflect the deformation of the lower layers on to
the surface layer (e.g., if there is any undulation in sub-grade then it will be transferred to the
surface layer). In the case of flexible pavement, the design is based on overall performance of
flexible pavement, and the stresses produced should be kept well below the allowable stresses of
each pavement layer.

Types of Flexible Pavements

The following types of construction have been used in flexible pavement:

 • Conventional layered flexible pavement,
• Full - depth asphalt pavement, and
• Contained rock asphalt mat (CRAM).

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 sub-grade. This is more suitable when there is high traffic and local materials are not
available.

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 significantly reduce the vertical compressive strain on soil sub-grade and protect from
surface water.

Typical layers of a flexible pavement

Typical layers of a conventional flexible pavement includes seal coat, surface course, tack coat,
binder course, prime coat, base course, sub-base course, compacted sub-grade, and natural sub-
grade (Figure 2).

Seal Coat:

Seal coat is a thin surface treatment used to water-proof the surface and to provide skid
resistance.

Tack Coat:

Tack coat is a very light application of asphalt, usually asphalt emulsion diluted with water. It
provides proper bonding between two layer of binder course and must be thin, uniformly cover
the entire surface, and set very fast.

Prime Coat:

Prime coat is an application of low viscous cutback bitumen to an absorbent surface like granular
bases on which binder layer is placed. It provides bonding between two layers. Unlike tack coat,
prime coat penetrates into the layer below, plugs the voids, and forms a water tight surface.
 Figure 2: Typical cross section of a flexible pavement

Surface course

Surface course is the layer directly in contact with traffic loads and generally contains superior
quality materials. They are usually constructed with dense graded asphalt concrete(AC). The
functions and requirements of this layer are:

• It provides characteristics such as friction, smoothness, drainage, etc. Also it will prevent
the entrance of excessive quantities of surface water into the underlying base, sub-base
and sub-grade,
• It must be tough to resist the distortion under traffic and provide a smooth and skid-
resistant riding surface,
• It must be water proof to protect the entire base and sub-grade from the weakening effect
of water.

Binder course

This layer provides the bulk of the asphalt concrete structure. It's chief purpose is to distribute
load to the base course The binder course generally consists of aggregates having less asphalt
and doesn't require quality as high as the surface course, so replacing a part of the surface course
by the binder course results in more economical design.

Base course

The base course is the layer of material immediately beneath the surface of binder course and it
provides additional load distribution and contributes to the sub-surface drainage. It may be
composed of crushed stone, crushed slag, and other untreated or stabilized materials.

Sub-Base course
The sub-base course is the layer of material beneath the base course and the primary functions
are to provide structural support, improve drainage, and reduce the intrusion of fines from the
sub-grade in the pavement structure If the base course is open graded, then the sub-base course
with more fines can serve as a filler between sub-grade and the base course A sub-base course is
not always needed or used. For example, a pavement constructed over a high quality, stiff sub-
grade may not need the additional features offered by a sub-base course. In such situations, sub-
base course may not be provided.

Sub-grade

The top soil or sub-grade is a layer of natural soil prepared to receive the stresses from the layers
above. It is essential that at no time soil sub-grade is overstressed. It should be compacted to the
desirable density, near the optimum moisture content.

Failure of flexible pavements

The major flexible pavement failures are fatigue cracking, rutting, and thermal cracking. The
fatigue cracking of flexible pavement is due to horizontal tensile strain at the bottom of the
asphaltic concrete. The failure criterion relates allowable number of load repetitions to tensile
strain and this relation can be determined in the laboratory fatigue test on asphaltic concrete
specimens. Rutting occurs only on flexible pavements as indicated by permanent deformation or
rut depth along wheel load path. Two design methods have been used to control rutting: one to
limit the vertical compressive strain on the top of subgrade and other to limit rutting to a
tolerable amount (12 mm normally). Thermal cracking includes both low-temperature cracking
and thermal fatigue cracking.

Rigid pavements

Rigid pavements have sufficient flexural strength to transmit the wheel load stresses to a wider
area below. A typical cross section of the rigid pavement is shown in Figure 3. Compared to
flexible pavement, 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 between
the concrete and the sub-grade, this layer can be called as base or sub-base course.

Figure 3: Typical Cross section of Rigid pavement

In rigid pavement, load is distributed by the slab action, and the pavement behaves like an elastic
plate resting on a viscous medium (Figure 4). Rigid pavements are constructed by Portland
cement concrete (PCC) and should be analyzed by plate theory instead of layer theory, assuming
an elastic plate resting on viscous foundation. Plate theory is a simplified version of layer theory
that assumes the concrete slab as a medium thick plate which is plane before loading and to
remain plane after loading. Bending of the slab due to wheel load and temperature variation and
the resulting tensile and flexural stress.

Elastic plate resting on viscous foundation

Deflection on concrete pavement

Types of Rigid Pavements

Rigid pavements can be classified into four types:

• Jointed plain concrete pavement (JPCP),

• Jointed reinforced concrete pavement (JRCP),
• Continuous reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP), and
• Pre-stressed concrete pavement (PCP).

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.

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. Failure criteria of rigid

pavements

Traditionally fatigue cracking has been considered as the major, or only criterion for rigid
pavement design. The allowable number of load repetitions to cause fatigue cracking depends on
the stress ratio between flexural tensile stress and concrete modulus of rupture. Of late, pumping
is identified as an important failure criterion. Pumping is the ejection of soil slurry through the
joints and cracks of cement concrete pavement, caused during the downward movement of slab
under the heavy wheel loads. Other major types of distress in rigid pavements include faulting,
spalling, and deterioration.
Summary

Pavements form the basic supporting structure in highway transportation. Each layer of
pavement has a multitude of functions to perform which has to be duly considered during the
design process. Different types of pavements can be adopted depending upon the traffic
requirements. Improper design of pavements leads to early failure of pavements affecting the
riding quality also.