A

Seminar report

On

Pavement Design
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of degree
Of Civil

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

www.studymafia.org Rahul Sharma

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 Acknowledgement
I would like to thank respected Mr…….. and Mr............for giving me such a wonderful
opportunity to expand my knowledge for my own branch and giving me guidelines to present a
seminar report. It helped me a lot to realize of what we study for.

Secondly, I would like to thank my parents who patiently helped me as i went through my work
and helped to modify and eliminate some of the irrelevant or un-necessary stuffs.

Thirdly, I would like to thank my friends who helped me to make my work more organized
and well-stacked till the end.

Next, I would thank Microsoft for developing such a wonderful tool like MS Word. It helped
my work a lot to remain error-free.

Last but clearly not the least, I would thank The Almighty for giving me strength to complete
my report on time.

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 Preface

I have made this report file on the topic Pavement Design; I have tried my best to elucidate all
the relevant detail to the topic to be included in the report. While in the beginning I have tried to
give a general view about this topic.

My efforts and wholehearted co-corporation of each and everyone has ended on a successful
note. I express my sincere gratitude to..................who assisting me throughout the preparation of
this topic. I thank him for providing me the reinforcement, confidence and most importantly the
track for the topic whenever I needed it.

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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.

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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.

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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

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distribution

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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).

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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,

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  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
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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

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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.

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The advantages of flexible pavements include -
» Adaptability to stage construction

» Availability of low-cost types that can be easily built

» Ability to be easily opened and patched

» Easy to repair frost heave and settlement

» Resistance to the formation of ice glaze

The disadvantages include -

» Higher maintenance costs

» Shorter life span under heavy use

» Damage by oils and certain chemicals

» Weak edges that may require curbs or edge devices

(i) Curbs can be used of concrete is probably the most common material
used for both barrier and mountable curbs. Concrete curbs are durable and
relatively easy to construct.

(ii) Asphalt is frequently used for curbing, especially where curved

parking is lands must be constructed. They are economical and easy to
construct.

(iii) Granite curbs are not as frequently used as asphalt or concrete unless
granite is quarried in the area. Granite curbs are far more durable than concrete.

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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.

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