Draft Pavement Design Guidelines

(Rigid Pavement)

Dr. Padma Bahadur Shahi

 Presentation content

• Introduction
• Scope
• Design Factors
• Design of Slab Thickness
• Design of Joints
• An example of Design
• Way forward
Approach for the developing ‘Pavement Design Guidelines”
• Pavements are designed for failure:
• Considerations for failure criteria

Let’s do some Engineering !!!

 Pavement type selection?
 Traffic Study/Survey?
 Sub-grade Soil Strength survey?
 Pavement design?
 Pavement Construction?
 Pavement operation?
 Pavement Maintenance ?
 Scope of the guidelines
• Rigid pavement:
• Higher volume of commercial vehicles more than 450 vpd
• Extremely overloaded highways
• Poor drainage system
• Weak sub-grade soil
• Types
• Joint Plain Cement Concrete Pavement (JPCP)
• Continuous Reinforced Concrete Pavement (CRCP)
• Precast Panel Concrete Pavement (PPCP)
 Design approaches (JPCP)
• Design of pavements considering the combined flexural stress
under the simultaneous action of wheel load and temperature
gradient for different categories of axles
• Design for bottom-up fatigue cracking caused by single and tandem
axle load repetitions
• Design for top-down fatigue cracking caused by single, tandem and
tridem axle load applications
• Design guidelines for pavements without concrete shoulders and
with tied concrete shoulders
• Consideration of Concrete slabs with unbonded as well as bonded
cement bound sub-base
• Design of pavements with widened outer lanes
 Typical Cross Sections
125 Micron thick
Polythene sheet

PQC

DLC/ Cement Treated Sub-base

GSB as drainage layer

Filter Separation Layer

Sub-grade

a) Debonding layer of Polythene sheet over

Cement treated Sub-base layer

• PQC-Pavement Quality Concrete

• DLC- Dry Lean Concrete
• BC- Bituminous Concrete
7
Typical Cross Sections….

PQC

Bituminous Concrete
Cement Treated Granular Sub-base

GSB as drainage layer

Filter Separation Layer

Sub-grade

b) Debonding layer of 40 mm BC over Cement

treated Sub-base layer

8
 PQC

DBM

Granular Sub-base

GSB as drainage layer

Filter Separation Layer

Sub-grade

c) PQC over 100 mm DBM and Granular Sub-base

 Design Factors: Axle Load Characteristics
• Permissible axle loads: single, tandem and tridem axles
• Axle load survey: for 48 hours,
• 20 % sample size: for CVPD is less than 3000
• 15 % sample size: for CVPD is 3000- 6000
• 10 % sample size: for CVPD is more than 6000
• Design period: 20-30 years
• Traffic analysis: traffic count survey for seven day and 24 hrs.
• Growth rate of commercial vehicles
• Tyre pressure is taken as 0.8 MPa
 Design Factors: Traffic considerations
• Bottom-up cracking:
• Maximum stress: when tyre imprint of the outer wheel touches the longitudinal
edge of the slab
• The edge flexural stress is small when the wheels are close to the transverse
joints
• 25 % of total two-way commercial traffic is considered for BUC fatigue
analysis (for two-way two-lane roads)
• For four lane divided highways, 25 % of the total traffic in the direction of
predominant traffic
 Design Factors: Traffic considerations
• Top-down cracking
• Commercial vehicles with the spacing between the front axle and the
first rear axle less than the spacing of transverse joints should be
considered for top-down cracking analysis
• Fifty percent of the design traffic for the BUC analysis.
• Only rear axles are considered for analysis
• Cumulative number of standard axle is calculated
 Temperature Difference
• Temperature difference between top and bottom of the slab causes the stress development
• The maximum temperature differential during the night time is nearly half of the day time maximum
temperature differential.
• Given in our cases: Assumed only!!

S/N Region Temperature differential, oC/thickness of slab

15 cm 20 cm 25 cm 30 cm

1 Hilly region 12.5 13.1 14.3 15.8

2 Terai region 15.6 16.4 16.6 16.8

CBR and Effective CBR
 Sub-grade Characteristics
• CBR (%) and Modulus of sub-grade reaction, k (MPa/m)
• Sub-grade CBR is converted into k
• Effective CBR of Sub-grade:
• Effective K for sub-base:

• Test for k-value (pressure per unit deflection: pressure sustained at a 1.25 mm deflection)

Soaked CBR Value, % 2 3 4 5 7 10 15 20 50 100

k-value, MPa/m 21 28 35 42 48 55 62 69 140 220

K-value of sub- Effective k (MPa/m) of untreated Granular layer Effective k (MPa/m) of Cement treated sub-
grade, (MPa/m) sub-base of thickness in mm base of thickness in mm

150 225 300 100 150 200

28 39 44 53 76 108 141
56 63 75 88 127 173 225
84 92 102 119 - - -
• Effective k, for DLC:
• The maximum value of effective k shall be taken as 300 MPa/m
k-value of sub-grade kg/cm2/cm 21 28 42 48 55 62

Effective k for 100 mm DLC (MPa/m) 56 97 166 208 278 389(300)

Effective k for 150 mm DLC (MPa) 97 138 208 277 412 (300) 300
 Separation layer between DLC and concrete slab

• Foundation layer below concrete slabs should be smooth to

reduce the inter layer friction. A separation membrane of
minimum thickness of 125 micron polythene is recommended
to reduce the friction between concrete slabs and DLC sub-
base
Characteristics of Concrete
 Fatigue behavior of Concrete
• Stress Ratio (SR): Ratio between the flexural stress due to the load
and the flexural strength of concrete
• If the SR is less than 0.45, the concrete is expected to sustain
infinite number of repetitions.
• As the stress ratio increases, the number of repetitions required to
cause cracking decreases
Stress ratio and allowable repetition Stress
Ratio
Allowable
Repetition
Stress
Ratio
Allowable
Repetition
for the concrete slab 0.45
0.46
6.279x107
1.4335x107
0.66
0.67
5.83x103
4.41x103
0.47 5.2x106 0.68 3.34x103
0.48 2.4x106 0.69 2531
0.49 1.287x106 0.7 1970
0.50 7.62x105 0.71 1451
0.51 4.85x105 0.72 1099
0.52 3.26x105 0.73 832
0.53 2.29x105 0.74 630
0.54 1.66x105 0.75 477
0.55 1.24x105 0.76 361
0.56 9.41x104 0.77 274
0.57 7.12x104 0.78 207
0.58 5.4x104 0.79 157
0.59 4.08x104 0.8 119
0.60 3.09x104 0.81 90
0.61 2.34x104 0.82 68
0.62 1.77x104 0.83 52
0.63 1.34x104 0.84 39
0.64 1.02x104 0.85 30
0.65 7.7x103
 Design of Slab Thickness
• Step 1: Specify design values for the various parameters.
• Step 2: Select a trial design thickness of pavement slab
• Step 3: Compute the repetitions of axle loads of different magnitudes
and different Categories during the design life
• Step 4: Find the proportions of axle load repetitions operating during
the day and Night periods
• Step 5: Estimate the axle load repetitions in the specified six-hour-
period during the day time. The maximum temperature differential is
assumed to remain constant during the 6 hours for analysis of bottom-up
cracking
 Design of Slab Thickness
• Step 6: Estimate the axle load repetitions
• Step 7: Compute the flexural stresses at the edge due to the single and tandem
axle loads for the combined effect of axle loads and positive temperature
differential during the day time. Determine the stress ratio (Flexural stress/
Modulus of Rupture) and evaluate the cumulative fatigue damage (CFD) for
single and tandem axle loads. Sum of the two CFDs should be less than 1.0 for
the slab to be safe against bottom-up cracking.

• Step 8: Compute the flexural stress in the central area of the pavement slab
with the front axle near the approaching transverse joint and the rear axle close
to the following joint in the same panel under negative temperature differential.
Determine the stress ratio and evaluate the CFD for different axle loads for the
analysis of top-down cracking. CFD should be less than 1.0 for top-down
cracking design
Design of Joints
• Contraction joints: transverse joints which release the tensile stresses
in concrete pavements (4.5m).
• Construction joints: transverse joints allow expansion of concrete slab
due to rise in average temperature in summer months.
• Expansion joints: transverse joints allow expansion of concrete slab
due to rise in average temperature in summer months. (not in use)
• Longitudinal joint: required in pavements of width greater than 4.5 m to
allow for transverse contraction and warping.
 Load Transfer at Transverse Joints
• Pavement slab at transverse joints is provided by means of
mild steel round dowel bars.
• The bearing stress in the concrete that is responsible for the
performance of dowel bars at the joints.
• Maximum bearing stress: Fbmax
• Each dowel bar should be designed for the maximum load
being transferred by it for the allowable bearing pressure.
Fb = allowable bearing stress, MPa
bd = dowel diameter, mm
• fck = characteristic compressive strength of the concrete, MPa
(For M 40 concrete, fck = 40 MPa (28 days); = 48 MPa (90
days)
Dowel bar recommendatios

Slab thickness Dowel bar details

Diameter, mm Length, mm Spacing, mm
200 25 360 300
230 30 400 300
250 32 450 300
280 36 450 300
300 38 500 300
350 38 500 300
 Design of Tie Bars

• The area of steel required per meter length of joint may be

computed using the following equation

• As = area of steel in mm2, required perm length of joint;

• b = lane width in meter;
• f = coefficient of friction between pavement and the sub-base /
base (usually taken as 1.5)
• W = weight of slab in kN/m2 and
• Sst = allowable working stress of steel in MPa
• Estimating the length of the tie bar is given as:

• L = length of tie bar (mm)

• Sst, = allowable working stress in steel (MPa)
• Acs = cross-sectional area of one tie bar (mm2)
• Pptb = perimeter of tie bar (mm), and
• B = permissible bond stress of concrete; (for deformed tie bars =
2.46 MPa; for plain tie bars- 1. 75 MPa.
Slab thickness Tie bar details
Diameter (d) Maximum Spacing, mm Minimum length, mm
mm Plain Deformed Plain Deformed
150 8 330 530 440 480
10 520 830 510 560
200 10 390 620 510 560
12 560 900 580 640
250 12 450 720 580 640
300 12 370 600 580 640
16 660 1060 720 800
350 12 320 510 580 640
16 570 910 720 800
 Reinforcement in Cement Concrete Pavement
• The amount of longitudinal and transverse steel required per meter
width or length of slab is:

• As = area of steel in mm2 required per m width or length of slab;

• Ld = distance (m) between free transverse joints (for longitudinal steel) or free
longitudinal joints (for transverse steel)
• f = coefficient of friction between pavement and sub-base/base (usually taken
as 1.5) · ·
• W = weight of the slab in kN/m2 and
• St = allowable working stress in steel in MPa (usually taken as 50 to 60
percent of the minimum yield stress of steel.
Validity Equations for Stress calculations
You Can download the Draft Guidelines:

https://www.scribd.com/document/459842928/Rigid-Pavement-
Design-Guidelines-DoR

Email me: pb_shahi@yahoo.com

Tel: 977-9851091057