ROAD

MAINTENANCE

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Maintenance
• Road maintenance is one of the important
components of the entire Road system. The
maintenance operations involve the assessment of
Road condition, diagnosis of the problem and
adopting the most appropriate maintenance
steps. Even if the highways are well designed and
constructed, they may require maintenance

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General Causes of Pavement Failures

• Use of low quality materials

• Defect in construction method and quality control during
construction
• Inadequate surface, subsurface or cross drainage work
• Increase in traffic
• Settlement of foundation
• Environmental factors viz heavy rainfall, soil erosion, high
water table, snowfall, Frost action etc
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Classification of maintenance works

• 1. Routine maintenance
• Filling up off potholes and pack repairs
• Maintenance of shoulders and cross slope
• Upkeep of the roadside drains and cleaning choked
culverts
• Maintenance of miscellaneous items like Road signs etc

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Classification of maintenance works..2

• 2. Periodic or Long Term maintenance

• Renewals of wearing codes of pavement surface and
preventive maintenance of various items

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Classification of maintenance works..3

• 3. Special repairs
• Strengthening of pavement overlay, reconstruction,
widening of roads, additional safety measures for
islands, signs etc

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Typical flexible pavement failures

• 1. Alligator or map cracking

• due to relative movement of pavement layer materials
• repeated application of heavy loads resulting in fatigue
failure
• moisture variation resulting in swelling and shrinkage of
subgrade another payment materials.

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Consolidation of pavement layers

• Repeated application of loads along the same wheel

path

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 Shear Failure and Cracking
• Inherent weakness of pavement mixtures

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Longitudinal cracking

• Differential settlement
• Especially different ages
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Frost heaving

• low temperature
• water supply
• Frost susceptible soil

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Lack of
binding with
lower layer
• Surface course is not
keyed/ bound with the
underlying base.

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Reflection
cracking
• When bitumen
overlay is
provided over
existing
cement
concrete
pavements 19
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Bleeding of bitumen

• Excess bitumen comes over the surface during summer

season

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Other failures inflexible pavements

• Pot Holes
• Bogey Action

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Failures in Rigid pavements

• Mud pumping
When material present below the road slab ejects out
through the joints or cracks, it is called pumping. When soil
slurry comes out it is called mud pumping. Infiltration of
water through the joints, cracks or edge of
the pavement forms soil slurry

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Maintenance of Earth Roads

• Problems
formation of dust in dry weather
formation of longitudinal ruts along wheel path of vehicles
Formation of crossroads along the surface after monsoons
new to surface water

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Maintenance of Earth Roads

• Remedies

1. use of other dust palliatives, oiled earth

2. treatment with calcium chloride
3. application of calcium chloride retains some water due
to the hygroscopic nature of the mix
4. use of stabilized layer on the top

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Maintenance of water bound macadam

• Problems
• dry weather- dust
• rainy season-mud mud
• Result : oil binder washes away and the stone aggregates
protude out and get loose.

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Maintenance of water bound macadam

• Remedies
1. use of palliatives
2. replacement of soil binder periodically by spreading a
thin layer of moist soil binder after monsoon
3. What holes and repair by Patch repair work. defective
area is marked and the whole material is removed from
that Patch, re mixed and compacted again and flushed
with existing surface
4. Bituminous surface dressing
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Maintenance of bituminous surfaces

• Problems as discussed earlier

• Remedies
1. Pot holes are cut to rectangular shape and the affected
area material in the section is removed till the sound
material is encountered. The excavated patches are
cleaned and painted with bituminous binder. A premixed
material is then placed in the section and compacted.

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Maintenance of bituminous surfaces..2

2. Surface treatment
Excess bitumen gives bleeding resulting in corrugations and
rutting. Blotting material aggregate chips of size less than
10MM or coarse sand is spread and then rolling. If minute
cracks are there due to ageing then surface dressing may
be done.
3. Resurfacing
If the payment surface is totally worn out then resurfacing
may be more economical.
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