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CIVL 440 Transportation Engineering II

Flexible Pavement Design

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PAVEMENTS CAN BE CLASSIFIED INTO

TWO TYPES
 Rigid Pavement
• Constructed from Portland Cement Concrete
• Has considerable flexural strength –
• Acts as a beam - bridges over minor irregularities
 Flexible Pavement
• Maintains intimate contact and distributes the
load to the sub grade
• Depends on aggregate interlock, particle friction
and cohesion for stability
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Flexible Pavement
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Flexible Pavement

 Surface or Wearing Course

• Usually comprise two or more layers that are different
in composition and put down in separate operations
• Ranges from 25 mm (1 in) to150 mm (6 in)
• Should posses sufficient stability to prevent shoving
and rutting
• Should withstand the wear effect of moving traffic
• Prevent water from entering the base
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Flexible Pavement
 The Base
• The base is a layer (or layers) of very high stability and
density
• Its principal purpose is to distribute or "spread" the
stresses created by wheel loads acting on the wearing
surface so that the stresses transmitted to the subgrade
will not be sufficiently great to result in excessive
deformation or displacement of that foundation layer.
• Locally available materials are extensively used for base
construction, and materials preferred for this type of
construction vary widely in different sections of the
country.
• Example: gravel or crushed rock, granular material treated
with asphalt, cement.
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Flexible Pavement
 The Subbase
• The use of the subbase is optional (not always used)
• Placed directly over the subgrade to support a base
course
• Used when the subgrade is very weak or when frost action
is severe
• Also used for economical reasons, in locations where
suitable subbase materials are cheaper than base
materials of higher quality.
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Flexible Pavement
 The Subgrade
• the foundation layer, the structure that must eventually
support all the loads that come onto the pavement.
• In some cases this layer will simply be the natural earth
surface. In other and more usual instances it will be
compacted soil existing in a cut section.
• The combined thickness of subbase (if used), base, and
wearing surface must be great enough to reduce the
stresses occurring in the subgrade to values that are not
sufficiently great to cause excessive distortion or
displacement of the subgrade soil layer
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Elements of Thickness Design

 Traffic loading
 Climate or environment
 Material characteristics
 Other elements (cost, construction,
maintenance)
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Traffic Loading
 Protection of the subgrade from the loading imposed by
traffic is one of the primary functions of a pavement
structure
 The designer must provide a pavement that can withstand a
large number of repeated applications of variable
magnitude loadings
 Primary loading factors:
• Magnitude of axle (and wheel) loads (controlled by legal load limits)
• Volume and composition of axle loads
• Tire pressure and contact area
 The total estimated magnitude and occurrence of the
various traffic loadings are converted to the total number of
passes of the equivalent standard axle loading, usually the
equivalent 80-kN single axle load (ESAL)
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Climate or Environment
 Two important Factors: Temperature and Moisture
 Temperature (magnitude of temperature and its
fluctuations)
• high temperatures cause asphaltic concrete to lose stability
• at low temperatures asphaltic concrete becomes very hard
and stiff
• Low temperature and temperature fluctuations are also
associated with frost heave and freeze-thaw damage
 Moisture
• Volume changes, less strength with higher moisture
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Measuring Soil Strength

 California Bearing Ratio Test

 Resilient Modulus

 Triaxial test Apparatus

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Measuring Soil Strength (Cont.)

 Resilient Modulus
• equivalent to "elastic modulus' of the materials in the pavement
structure
• The latest version of the AASHTO
design method have used the resilient
modulus as the material property input for the subgrade soil
• Time consuming and most agencies
estimate the resilient modulus from
tests such as the CBR
• It is possible to estimate the resilient
modulus from the standard CBR
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The AASHTO Flexible Pavement Design

Method
 The AASHTO Road Test
• Pavement Serviceability (Roughness, Cracking and Rutting)
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Input Variables for the AASHTO Flexible

Design Method
1. Total ESAL expected to use the design lane during the
design period
2. Reliability Level
3. Overall Standard Deviation
4. Effective roadbed resilient modulus
5. Resilient modulus of the surface course material, base
course material and subbase course material
6. Design serviceability loss
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Traffic Load and Analysis

 vehicles

 % trucks
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Traffic Load and Analysis

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Example: Traffic Load and Analysis

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Reliability and Standard Deviation

 The reliability design factor accounts for chance variations

in both traffic prediction and the performance prediction
 It provides a predetermined level of assurance (R) that
pavement sections will survive the period for which they
were designed
 For a given reliability level, the reliability factor is a
function of the overall standard deviation (So), which
accounts for standard variation in materials and
construction, the chance variation in the traffic prediction,
and the normal variation in pavement performance
 The standard deviations of 0.45 and 0.35 respectively are
suggested by the Guide for flexible and rigid pavements

CIVL 440 Transportation Engineering II

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Effective Roadbed Soil Resilient Modulus

CIVL 440 Transportation Engineering II

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CIVL 440 Transportation Engineering II

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Selection of Pavement Thickness Design

CIVL 440 Transportation Engineering II

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CIVL 440 Transportation Engineering II /C. Lim

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CIVL 440 Transportation Engineering II

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CIVL 440 Transportation Engineering II

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CIVL 440 Transportation Engineering II