Pavement is a hard surface composed of durable surface material that is placed down on an area meant to carry automobile or pedestrian activity.
What is an Ideal pavement?
A good pavement should meet the following criteria:
- It should be thick enough to distribute the wheel load strains to a safe level on the sub-grade soil, and it should be structurally robust enough to withstand all forms of stresses.
- It should have a suitable coefficient of friction to avoid vehicle sliding.
- It should have a smooth, flat surface that provides comfort to drivers at high speeds.
- Reduce noise while the car is traveling on it.
- It should be dustproof so that traffic safety is not jeopardized.
- It must provide an impermeable covering to preserve the sub-grade soil, and it must be low maintenance and long lasting.
Types of Road Pavement:
- Flexible Pavements:
Flexible pavement is described as a combination of asphaltic or bituminous material and aggregates put in layers over the subgrade over a bed of compacted granular material of acceptable quality. Flexible pavements include water-bound macadam roads and stabilized soil roads with or without asphaltic overlays.
The design of flexible pavement is based on the idea that the intensity of a load decreases as it is transferred downwards from the surface by distributing it across an ever greater area and conveying it deep enough into the ground through successive layers of granular material.
Types of Flexible Road Pavement:
- Conventional layered flexible pavement,
- Full-depth asphalt pavement, and
- Contained rock asphalt mat (CRAM).
- Rigid Pavements:
Rigid pavements are made of cement concrete or reinforced concrete slabs. Concrete roadways that have been grouted are considered semi-rigid pavements. The rigid pavement design is centered on providing a structural cement concrete slab of adequate strength to withstand traffic stresses. The stiff pavement has rigidity and a high modulus of elasticity, allowing the load to be distributed across a relatively large surface of soil.
It is made out of a single layer of Portland cement concrete slab with a comparatively good flexural strength. Temperature variations, on the other hand, cause significant strains in in-flexible pavements. Although it has a high initial production cost, it also has a better resilience and sustainability to cracks and deformities.
Types of rigid road pavement:
- Jointed plain concrete pavement (JPCP),
- Jointed reinforced concrete pavement (JRCP),
- Continuous reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP), and
- Prestressed concrete pavement (PCP).
In principle, both flexible and rigid pavements are built to have a long life (e.g., more than 35 years) with little maintenance. However, Roads have a limited form of life and will need repair sooner or later based on the quality and type of pavement. There are various forms and methods of improving roads, one such economical option of improving road pavement condition is Microsurfacing. The advantage of Microsurfacing over others is that it can be used for resurfacing both forms of pavement. An optimum level of microsurfacing with the affordable cost is the right way to increase the life of the road with lower depreciation per annum.
Which type of road pavement to choose for your road construction depends on a lot of factors like budget, the intensity of traffic expected, the need for underground repairs and the durability needed and the time available to construct the road.