Design of Short Panelled Concrete Pavements for

Low Volume Roads

Shrey Pandey*, K Sridhar Reddy$, M. Amaranatha Reddy#
*M Tech student, $ Research Scholar, # Professor, Transportation Engineeringg
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur-721 302, West Bengal, India;
#
manreddy@iitkgp.ac.in

1. Introduction
Concrete pavements are becoming popular because of maintenance requirement is less over years as
compared to bituminous pavements but the initial cost associated with these pavements is high. IRC: SP:62-
2014 guidelines for concrete pavements for low volume roads adopts transverse joint spacing of 2.5- 4.0 m
respectively with thickness of concrete slab varies from 210 to 240 mm for 150 `CVPD. Adopting transverse
joint at closure intervals i.e 1.0 to 2.0 m size, it is quite possible to reduce thickness of concrete slabs for the
same thickness and this is possible through Short Panelled Concrete Pavements (SPCP) with dimension of
slab in the order of 1.0 x 1.0 m to 2.0 x 2.0 m. Panels are formed by introducing early entry saw-cut of 3 to 4 mm
width and to a depth of 1/4th to 1/3rd of thickness of the slab within 16 to 20 hours of placement of concrete.
The purpose of saw-cut is to reduce the constraint for drying shrinkage and produce 4 controlled full depth
cracks, which can be maintained periodically. After partial isolation of slabs (panels), load transfer in SPCP
is ensured by aggregate interlock and hence SPCP does not require any load transfer devices (Pradena &
Houben 2018) such as dowel bars unlike JPCP making it an economical solution as well.

2. Short Panelled Concrete Pavements

Short Paneled Concrete Pavement (SPCP) is a new type of pavements which is evolving slowly and not much
literature is available regarding design and performance of these pavements. SPCP is gaining popularity
owing to the satisfactory performance of thin white toppings (WT) worldwide. The load distribution over a
smaller panel size can be seen from the figure below where the concrete slab is bending when the span is
more than 2 m and the panel (<1.2 m) is merely taking the compressive force and transferring the load to
base through punching.

Figure 1: The slab action and short panel action of concrete overlay

55
 International Conference on New Technologies & Innovations in Rural Roads
Pradhan Mantri
Gram Sadak Yojana

WT (smaller panel size concrete slab over existing bituminous pavement) of thickness 100–150 mm (or
even lesser for ultra-thin white toppings-UTWT) are successfully implemented for rehabilitation of existing
bituminous pavements is provided over the existing bituminous pavement and performance of these
pavements are very well without any need for maintenance for a long time as the CC panels distribute
the load on wider area before transferring it onto the bituminous (base) layer. IRC: SP 76. (2015) provides
guidelines for conventional and thin Whitetopping.

Successful implementation of WT attracted the attention of highway community to adopt SPCP on high
volume roads where in concrete slab is placed on existing thick bituminous pavement as well as DLC, CTSB
and subgrade. SPCP test section of panels of sizes 1 m X 1 m, 1.5 m X 1.5 m and 2.0 x 2.0 m were designed
with a thickness of concrete slabs as 180 mm, 200 and 220 mm was constructed on DLC, CTSB and subgrade
of NH-18 (old NH-33) of Baharagora - Mahulia section on high traffic corridor as a part on NHAI posnored
project on SPCP for high volume roads. The performance of the test section was evaluated and found
satisfactory. Figure 2 shows the view of SPCP on NH-18 (old NH-33) constructed in the year 2017.

Figure 2: A view of Short Panel concrete pavement (SPCP) on NH-18 (old NH-33) (Year 2017)

  
(Technical Report-VI, 2019)

By reducing the slab sizes, the curling stresses gets reduced which is a function of the temperature gradient
prevailing in the slab. The type of distress observed in the pavement depends more on the slab size rather
than the thickness of the pavement.

3. Review of Literature on SPCP

As SPCP are successfully designed and used on high volume roads, similar type of pavement can also be
adopted for low volume roads with similar base and subbase course used in conventional concrete pavement
(IRC: SP-62: 2014). However, solution for these panel sizes is not available for new road construction. It was
observed from the literature available that the pavement performance is more affected by the slab size
compared to the thickness. Smaller size slabs would undergo lesser curling stresses compared to larger
size slabs. The distress observed in short slabs is corner cracking and longitudinal cracking. Bhattacharya
et al. (2019) summed up the critical type of cracking observed on interstate highways for square slabs with
variable joint spacing. An interesting fact is that the square short slabs (0.6 to 1.2 m of side) are prone to
corner cracking; medium-sized square slabs (1.5 to 2.4 m of side) experience longitudinal cracking and large
square slabs (3.0 to 3.6 m of side) witness transverse cracking. The square slabs are typically being adopted

56
 International Conference on New Technologies & Innovations in Rural Roads
Pradhan Mantri
Gram Sadak Yojana

for low-to-high volume roads by various agencies in the USA, Chile, and India. The Chile field sections (Salsilli
et al., 2013; Salsilli et al., 2015) with 80 mm thick slab and 0.88 m, 1.20 m, 1.75 m, and 3.5 m of square slabs
have been observed to perform poorly whereas the thicker slabs (150 mm) performed better. The observed
predominant distresses are in the order of longitudinal, transverse, and corner cracking alarming the low
degree of load transfer. It is to be noted that these sections have been built over granular subbase (CBR
ranges about 85 to 90%) and subgrade (CBR of 15 to 70%).

For very short panels sizes where the wheel paths coincide with the corners of the pavement, corner cracking
is observed and in slabs approximately half the lane width, longitudinal cracking is observed. The critical
tensile stresses are reduced in smaller slabs as not more than one set of wheels are placed on the slab at
a given time. As curling stresses are also reduced in short concrete pavements, thickness of slab would be
reduced compared with conventional concrete pavements.

4. Design of Short Panelled Concrete Pavements

In order to design SPCP, critical load positions were arrived first for different slab sizes and then analysis
was carried out for different loading and temperature gradients based on single slab analysis and
stress charts were developed. Finite element modelling by ABAQUS tool with elastic solid foundation
was employed for this purpose and three critical loading positions were considered – corner, edge and
longitudinal cracking. The stresses due to wheel loads and temperature differential were calculated for
a single slab resting over (i) CTB layer, and (ii) WMM layer for LVR. Three different thicknesses of PQC
and WMM were considered for the analysis. The thickness of the slab was varied and the stresses were
computed corresponding to critical load positions. The stress chart for PQC resting over 100 mm CTB for
a loading of 120 kN placed at the longitudinal edge of the pavement with positive temperature gradient
of 17.30C is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Stress due to load of 120 kN at the longitudinal edge with ∆T = 17.3˚C

(Pandey, 2022)

57
 International Conference on New Technologies & Innovations in Rural Roads
Pradhan Mantri
Gram Sadak Yojana

Similar charts were developed for different loading conditions (40 kN to 160 kN) and slab sizes for given
modulus of subgrade reaction (k) values. From the analysis, it was found that the critical stresses due to
loads with positive temperature gradient are found to be higher as compared to the loads with negative
temperature gradients. Further stresses in the PQC slab are lesser when the slab is placed over the CTB layer
as compared to WMM layer. This can be attributed to the fact that CTB is much stiffer as compared to WMM
layer. However, there were exceptions to this trend depending on the load positions.

Author would like to express sincere thanks to NHAI, New Delhi for sponsoring the research project on
Laboratory and field investigation of short panelled concrete pavement for highways.

References
Bhattacharya, B.B., Gotlif, A., Darter, M.I., and Khazanovich, L. (2019). “Impact of Joint Spacing on Bonded Concrete Overlay of Existing Asphalt
Pavement in the AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design Software.” J. Transp. Eng., Part B: Pavements, 145(3): 04019018.
IRC: SP 62. (2014). “Guidelines for the design and construction of cement concrete pavements for low volume roads.” Indian Roads Congress, New Delhi.
IRC: SP 76. (2015). “Guidelines for conventional and thin Whitetopping.” Indian Roads Congress, New Delhi.
Salsili, R., Wahr, C., Delgadillo, R., Huerta, J., and Sepúlveda, P. (2015). “Field performance of concrete pavements with short slabs and design procedure
calibrated for Chilean conditions.” International Journal of Pavement Engineering. 16:4., 363-379.
Salsilli, R., Wahr, C., Delgadillo, R., Huerta, J., & Sepúlveda, P. (2013). Design Method for Concrete Pavements with Short Slabs Based on Westergaard’s
Equations and Dimensional Analysis. In 92nd Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, Washington DC, USA.
Pandey S (2022) Analysis of short panelled concrete pavements and development of stress charts for low volume roads, M Tech Thesis, Transportation
Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur.
Pradena, M., & Houben, L. (2018). Load transfer-crack width relation of non-dowelled jointed plain concrete short slabs. Baltic Journal of Road and
Bridge Engineering, 13(1), 40-45.
Technical Report-VI (2019): Laboratory and field investigation of panelled cement concrete pavements for highways, Submitted to NHAI, New Delhi.

58