Transportation Engineering II

Pavement Components
CE 3305: Transportation Engineering II:
Pavement Design and Railway Engineering
3.0 Credits
Course Teacher : Md. Shofiul Islam
Pavement materials: bituminous binders, cement, aggregates, embankment material, soil
stabilization, mix design methods, low-cost roads, Flexible and Rigid pavement: Pavement
components and functions, pavement design and construction, Pavement maintenance,
railway engineering: general requirements, rolling stock and tracks, stations and yards, points
and crossings, signaling, maintenance operations.
Mid Term Syllabus
Week 1: Flexible and Rigid Pavement - 15.9.2022 + 16.9.2022
Week 2: Pavement Components and its Functions - 22.9.22 + 23.9.22
Week 3: Pavement Design and Construction – 29.09.22 + 30.9.22
Week 4: Pavement Design and Construction – 6.10.22 + 7.10.22
Week 5: Pavement Maintenance – 13.10.22 + 14.10.22
 The goal of structural design is to determine the
number, material composition and thickness of
the different layers within a pavement structure
required to accommodate a given loading
regime.

 This includes the surface-course as well as any

underlying base or sub-base layers.
 Pavements are typically designed for a specified
"design life".
 Design life (or "design period") is the time from
original construction to a terminal condition for a
pavement structure.
 Structural design is carried out so that the
pavement structure is sufficient to withstand the
traffic loading encountered over the pavement's
design life.
 It is recognized that intermittent maintenance
and rehabilitation efforts may be needed to
preserve a pavement's surface quality and ensure
that the structure lasts through the design life.
 For flexible pavements, structural design is mainly
concerned with determining appropriate layer
thickness and composition.
 Calculations are chiefly concerned with traffic
loading stresses; other environmentally related
stresses (such as temperature) are accounted for
in mix design asphalt binder selection.
 The two principal methods of flexible pavement
structural design in use today, empirical and
mechanistic-empirical, are covered.
 For rigid pavements, structural design is mainly
concerned with determining the appropriate slab
thickness based on traffic loads and underlying
material properties, and joint design.
 This is done by considering a variety of stresses
which affect rigid pavement performance: curling
(temperature stresses), warping (moisture
stresses), wheel load and shrinkage/expansion.
 The two principal methods of rigid pavement
structural design in use today, empirical and
mechanistic-empirical, are covered.
 Design factors can be divided into four
broad categories:

 Traffic and Loading

 Environment
 Materials
 Failure criteria
 The traffic and loading to be considered
include:

 Axle Loads
 Number of Repetitions
 Contact Area
 Vehicle Speed
Contact pressure: The tyre pressure is an
important factor, as it determine the
contact area and the contact pressure
between the wheel and the pavement
surface. Even though the shape of the
contact area is elliptical, for sake of
simplicity in analysis, a circular area is
often considered.
0.6 L
Wheel load: The next important factor is the wheel
load which determines the depth of the pavement
required to ensure that the subgrade soil is not
failed.
Wheel configuration affects the stress distribution
and deflection within a pavement. Many commercial
vehicles have dual rear wheels which ensure that the
contact pressure is within the limits. The normal
practice is to convert dual wheel into an equivalent
single wheel load so that the analysis is made
simpler.
 Effect of position of wheel
Edge Loading

Load at Joint

Different position of wheel loading

Traffic Direction
Axle configuration: The load carrying
capacity of the commercial vehicle is
further enhanced by the introduction of
multiple axles.

Moving loads (Speed): The damage to the

pavement is much higher if the vehicle is
moving at creep speed. Many studies show
that when the speed is increased from 2
km/hr to 24 km/hr, the stresses and
deflection reduced by 40 per cent.
6 ton 10 ton

6 ton 18 ton
 6 ton 18 ton

10 ton

10 ton

6 ton 18 ton
 10 ton

6 ton 24 ton
130 tones
Problem 1: Draw the most realistic
contact area for an (80-kN) single-
axle load with a tire pressure of 80 psi
(552 kPa) . What are the other
configurations of contact area that
have been used for pavement design ?
Solution : The 18-kip (80-kN) single-axle load is
applied over four tires, each having a load of 4500
lb (20 kN) .
The contact area of each tire is Ac = 4500/80 = 56
.25 in2.

Again Ac = 0.5227 L2

L = Sqrt(56 .25/0 .5227 )= 10 .37 in . (263 mm) .

The width of the tire is 0 .6L = 0.6 x10 .37 = 6 .22

in . (158 mm) . The configuration of various
contact areas is shown in next slide.
0.6 L
 Assignment 1

Problem 1: Sketch and show the dimensions of the most

realistic contact areas for a dual-tandem axle load of 40,000 lb
with a tire pressure of 100 psi . If the contact areas are
assumed as rectangles, what should be the dimension of the
rectangular area?
Repetition of Loads: The influence of traffic on
pavement not only depend on the magnitude of
the wheel load, but also on the frequency of the
load applications.
Each load application causes some deformation
and the total deformation is the summation of all
these.
Although the pavement deformation due to single
axle load is very small, the cumulative effect of
number of load repetition is significant.
Therefore, modern design is based on total
number of standard axle load (usually 80 kN
single axle).
 The environmental factors that influence pavement design include
temperature and precipitation. Both these factors affecting elastic
modulus of various layers.

 Temperature: The effects of temperature on asphalt pavements is

different from that on concrete pavements. Temperature affects the
resilient modulus of asphalt layers, while it induces curling of
concrete slab. In rigid pavements, due to difference in temperatures
of top and bottom of slab, temperature stresses or frictional
stresses are developed. While in flexible pavement, dynamic
modulus of asphaltic concrete varies with temperature. Frost heave
causes differential settlements and pavement roughness. Most
detrimental effect of frost penetration occurs during the spring
break up period when the ice melts and sub-grade is a saturated
condition.

 Precipitations: The precipitation from rain and snow affects the

quantity of surface water infiltrating into the sub-grade and the
location of the groundwater table.
 In the mechanistic-empirical methods
of design, the properties of materials
must be specified, so that the response
of the pavement, such as stresses,
strains, and displacements in the critical
components, can be determined.
 Failure criteria for Flexible and Rigid pavements
are different;

 It is generally agreed that Fatigue cracking,

Rutting, Thermal cracking are the three principal
types of failure criteria to be considered for
Flexible pavement design.

 Fatigue cracking has long been considered the

major or only criterion for Rigid pavement
design. Only recently has pumping or erosion
been considered.
Low Temperature Thermal Crack
Fatigue Crack in Rigid Pavement
 How a pavement responds to applied
stresses determines how it will behave
structurally.

 Stresses and the resultant pavement

response are the combined result of
loading, environment, sub-grade and
pavement material characteristics.
 There are a variety of ways to calculate or at least
account for these stresses in design.
 The empirical approach uses the AASHO Road
Test results to correlate measurable parameters
(such as sub-grade resilient modulus) and
derived indices (such as the structural number
and pavement serviceability index) to pavement
performance.
 The mechanistic-empirical approach relates
calculated pavement stresses to empirically
derived failure conditions.
➢The stresses that occur in a flexible pavement
under load are quite complex.
➢ Although rigid pavement stresses have been
routinely calculated since the 1920s, routine
calculation of flexible pavement stresses is a
more recent development.
➢ First, two-dimensional layered elastic
programs offered desktop computers the ability
to calculate these stresses.
➢More recently, three-dimensional finite element
programs have allowed more exact and detailed
calculations.
 Using a two-dimensional layered elastic model,
the basic relationships between layer stiffness
and stress for a two-layer flexible pavement
structure is shown in next few Slides.

 In reality, stress distributions are more

complex, however the basic relationships hold
true.

➢ Because of the complex nature, a finite
elements model is needed to get a good
approximation of how a flexible
pavement responds to loading.

➢ The complex stress and strains for a

two-layer flexible pavement structure are
shown graphically in next slide using a
three-dimensional finite elements model.