New age pavement design solutions using stone-age technology

The 2012 Austroads pavement design guides, which have been developed over a number of years, provide comprehensive guidelines for the design and rehabilitation of road pavements. These guidelines, with its appropriate amendments by road authorities, have been well established in Australia and used successfully in the past. These design and rehabilitation methods rely upon good information of the existing pavement structure and condition. In many cases, this information can be obtained by various means, including deflection tests, test pits and laboratory testing. However, in some cases this information is difficult, or expensive to obtain, particularly for projects in more remote locations. This has been a particular problem following the 2011 Queensland floods, where pavement rehabilitation of short lengths of pavement was required in remote areas spanning a vast area. In the absence of information, designers often assume certain default values based on experience or very limited information. This can often lead to conservative pavement designs to account for uncertainties as a result of a lack of existing pavement information. This paper presents an alternative pavement rehabilitation design method using the Dynamic Cone Penetrometer (DCP) to assess the quality of the individual pavement layers and develop an appropriate pavement design that would be required for the particular pavement under consideration. The design method, developed in Southern Africa during the 1970’s and early 1980’s, is fundamentally based on the CBR cover design method, also known as the empirical design method in Austroads. Although the method was developed for traffic volumes up to 10 million Equivalent Standard Axles (ESA’s), it has been widely and successfully used on pavement with traffic volumes up to 30 million ESA’s. This paper also presents guidelines and case studies for the use of DCP tests to obtain information regarding the existing pavement structure, i.e. pavement layer thickness, variability and in situ layer strength, without the need for expensive testing.

• Record URL:
  http://arrbknowledge.com
• 
• Authors:
  • Liebenberg, J
  • Grobler, J
• Conference:
  • AAPA International Flexible Pavements Conference, 15th, 2013, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
• Publication Date: 2013-9

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: 23p
• Monograph Title: Delivering new age solutions: 15th AAPA International Flexible Pavements Conference, 22-25 September, Royal International Conference Centre, Brisbane

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Cone penetrometers; Data collection; Dynamic penetration test; Empirical methods; Pavement performance; Pavements; Test procedures; Tests for suitability, service and quality
• Uncontrolled Terms: Pavement technology
• Geographic Terms: Australia
• ATRI Terms: Data collection; Dynamic penetration test; Empirical design; Pavement evaluation; Pavement performance; Pavement testing
• ITRD Terms: 9011: Design (overall design)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Pavements; I22: Design of Pavements, Railways and Guideways;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01503272
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: ARRB
• Files: ITRD, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 6 2014 10:55AM