INTRODUCTION
When all is said and done, the pavement industry deals in high-volume, low-cost materials. In the UK
alone, there are approximately 14 000 km of trunk road and motorway with a surface area of some
250 km2 , around 10% of which has to be resurfaced each year. In the USA, this figure can be
multiplied by about six. And these are not figures that can be dramatically reduced while motor
vehicle transport remains such a key factor in the economy. The choice of materials is, therefore,
limited to those that can be easily and cheaply produced in large quantities – which inevitably means
the raw materials of the earth, namely rock, sand and clay. Any additive used to give extra quality –
such as bitumen or cement – has to be used relatively sparingly; otherwise society just could not
afford it – to say nothing of the environmental cost of such additives. The job of the pavement
engineer, therefore, is to maximise the potential of these cheap, readily-processable materials. The
unit cost of the bulk materials may be relatively low, but the quantities required are very high
indeed, which means that a modest saving per square metre can multiply up to a very substantial
saving overall. To put it another way, if the life of a road pavement can be extended by 10%, this
represents a very large contribution to the local economy.
1.1. The long history of the paved highway
It is impossible to know where or when the wheel was invented. It is hard to imagine that Stone
Age humans failed to notice that circular objects such as sections of tree trunk rolled. The great
megalithic tombs of the third millennium BC bear witness to ancient humans’ ability to move
massive stones, and most commentators assume that tree trunks were used as rollers; not quite
a wheel but a similar principle! However, it is known for certain that the domestication of the
horse in southern Russia or the Ukraine in about 4000 BC was followed not long afterwards by
the development of the cart. It is also known that the great cities of Egypt and Iraq had, by the
late third millennium BC, reached a stage where pavements were needed. Stone slabs on a
rubble base made an excellent and long-lasting pavement surface suitable for both pedestrian
usage and also traffic from donkeys, camels, horses, carts and, by the late second millennium
BC, chariots. Numerous examples survive from Roman times of such slabbed pavements, often
showing the wear of tens of thousands of iron-rimmed wheels. Traffic levels could be such that
the pavement had a finite life. Even in such ancient times, engineers had the option to use more
than simply stones if they so chose – but only if they could justify the cost! Concrete technology
made significant strides during the centuries of Roman rule and was an important element in
the 3 structural engineer’s thinking. Similarly, bitumen had been used for thousands of years in
Iraq as asphalt mortar in building construction. Yet neither concrete nor asphalt was used by
pavement engineers in ancient times, for the excellent reason that neither material came into
the cheap, high-volume category. As far as the pavement engineer was concerned, economics
dictated that the industry had to remain firmly in the Stone Age. Even in the days of Thomas
Telford and John Loudon Macadam – the fathers of modern road building in the UK – the art of
pavement construction consisted purely of optimising stone placement and the size fractions
used. Times have moved on; the massive exploitation of oil has meant that bitumen, a by-
product from refining heavy crude oil, is now much more widely available. Cement technology
has progressed to the stage where it is sufficiently cheaply available to be considered in
pavement construction. However, there is no way that pavement engineers can contemplate
using some of the twenty-first century’s more expensive materials – or, at least, they can be
used only in very small amounts. Steel can only be afforded as reinforcement in concrete and,
even in such modest quantities, it represents a significant proportion of the overall cost. Plastics
find a use in certain types of reinforcement product; polymers can be used to enhance bitumen
properties; but always the driving force is cost, which means that, whether we like it or not,
Stone Age materials still predominate.
1.2. Materials for pavement construction
In introducing the various building blocks from which pavements are constructed, it will not be
possible to avoid entirely the use of technical terms such as ‘load’, ‘strength’ and ‘stiffness’.
Definitions of these terms can be found in Chapter 4.
1.2.1 Soil
Every pavement, other than those on bridges, self-evidently includes soil. The most basic design
requirement of any pavement is that the underlying soil is adequately protected from applied loads.
Thus, no pavement engineer can avoid the need to understand soil. The following list features some
key facts. g Soils vary from heavy clays, through silts and sands to high-strength rocky materials. g
Soils are not usually consistent along the length of a road or across any pavement site. g Soils are
sensitive to water content to differing degrees. g Water content will vary during the life of a
pavement, sometimes over quite short timescales, in response to weather patterns. g Some soils are
highly permeable; some clays are virtually impermeable.
All this leads to one thing – uncertainty. However clever one tries to be in understanding and
characterising soils, it is quite impossible to be 100% sure of the properties at a given time or in a
given location. This uncertainty makes life considerably harder. Nevertheless, it is necessary to
categorise each soil type encountered in as realistic a way as possible, and there are Principles of
Pavement Engineering 4 two fundamental areas in which soil behaviour affects pavement
performance. These are g stiffness under transient (i.e. moving wheel) load g resistance to
accumulation of deformation under repeated load, likely to be related to shear strength. The various
means of testing, measuring and estimating these properties are covered in Part 2 of this book, as
are the possibilities of soil improvement by using additives such as cement and lime.
