Lecture 7: Super-elevation

Design
TR 320 Highway Geometric Design
 Objective of the Lecture

Lecturer:
• To introduce super-elevation design
The learner should be able to:
• To drawn super-elevation diagram
and provide details for the critical
points
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Design
 Key points
• Design super-elevation
• Super-elevation Transition
• Criteria for superelevation runoff
length
• Methods for attainment of super
elevation
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Design
 Super elevation (re-cap)
• Refers to banking of curves to counteract the
centripetal force experienced by a vehicle
negotiating a curve
• Super-elevation is expressed as a slope (% or in
the minimum radius equation ass a decimal)
• Design values: 8% (sometimes up to 12%) is
adopted as a maximum value for rural roads
and 4% or 6% for urban roads

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Design
 Design super-elevation
• Max. super-elevation rates are limited by:
– The need to prevent slow moving vehicles
from sliding to the inside of the curve
– Keeping parking lanes relatively level in
urban areas
– The need to keep differences in slope
between road and streets intersecting with
it within reasonable bounds
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Design
 Super-elevation transition
• Involves the modification of roadway cross
section from normal crown to full super-
elevation
• E.g. for a normal crown of 2% to full super-
elevation of 6% (Please make a sketch!!)
• Terms: Tangent run-out, super-elevation
runoff; normal crown, adverse camber
removed

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Design
Interpretation of Super-elevation diagram
 Computation of levels
• Reference : the centre line
• Levels of other parts are computed in
reference to the centre line
• To get final elevation add to the centre line
elevation
• See figure below

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Design
Super-elevation diagram for twolane
road with 3.6 m wide lanes
• Super elevation transition is normally linear,
i.e. the rate of rotation of the pavement is
constant with respect to distance through the
transition
• Spiral transitions are used in conjuction with
superelevation transitions
• Normally coincide with super elevation runoff

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Design
 Methods for attainment of
superelevation
• For highways superelevation is attained most
commonly by rotating the cross section about
the profile grade line
• This means the centre line for two lane
roadways and undivided multilane highways
• For divided highways with wide medians the
rotation is about the inside travelled way edge
• (For railways it is the top of lower rail)
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Design
 Criteria for Length of
superelevation runoff
• Vehicle dynamics, or
• Appearance criteria

• Vehicle dynamics criterion is associated with

the use of transition curves and is based on
the need to limit the rate of increase of
centripetal force as one traverses the
transition curve (comfort)
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Design
The minimum length is determined
from the formula:
L = 0.0702 V /RC 3

– L = minimum length of spiral

– V = design speed, km/hr
– R = curve radius, m
– C rate of increase of centripetal
acceleration, m/s3
– C value from 1.0 to 3 are used
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Design
 AASHTO Recommends:

• L = 0.0214 V3/RC
– For minimum length of spiral for highways
(comfort)
– Provide minimum shift
• Maximum radius for use of a spiral for safety
reasons is also recommended, see Exhibit 3-
36

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Design
 Appearance criteria
• Based on rate of rotation of pavement during
the development of superelevation so that
the relative slope of the outside edge is 1:200
or more for V greater than 80 km/hr
otherwise 1:100

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Design