KOFORIDUA TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING

CVE 303: HIGHWAY ENGINEERING

ROAD MAINTENANCE
WHY IS ROAD MAINTENANCE IMPORTANT

1. Roads are among the most important public

assets in many countries.

2. Postponing road maintenance results in high

direct and indirect costs.

3. Delayed maintenance has indirect costs as

well.
 WHAT IS MAINTENANCE
• The goal of maintenance is to preserve the asset,
not to upgrade it.

• Road maintenance comprises “activities to keep

pavement, shoulders, slopes, drainage facilities
and all other structures and property within the
road margins as near as possible to their as-
constructed
 TYPES OF MAINTENANCE
• Routine Maintenance
• Periodic Maintenance
• Emergency Maintenance
 ROUTINE MAINTENANCE

• Which comprises small-scale works conducted regularly, aims “to

ensure the daily passability and safety of existing roads in the short-
run and to prevent premature deterioration of the roads.

• Frequency of activities varies but is generally once or more a week

or month. Typical activities include roadside verge clearing and
grass cutting, cleaning of silted ditches and culverts. For gravel
roads it may include regrading every six months..

• Sweeping
• Grass cutting
• Cleaning drain
• Clearing slips
 PERIODIC MAINTENANCE

• Which covers activities on a section of road at regular and relatively

long intervals, aims “to preserve the structural integrity of the road”.

• These operations tend to be large scale, requiring specialized

equipment and skilled personnel.

• Activities can be classified as preventive, resurfacing, overlay, and

pavement reconstruction.

• For a paved road repaving is needed about every eight years; for a
gravel road re-graveling is needed about every three years.
 EMERGENCY MAINTENANCE

• Is undertaken for repairs that cannot be foreseen

but require immediate attention, such as collapsed
culverts or landslides that block a road.

• Maintenance does not include rehabilitation,

building shoulders, or widening roads.

• If the sections to be rebuilt constitute more than 25

percent of the road’s length, the work is
rehabilitation, not maintenance.
 FORMS OF MAINTENANCE

• For bituminous roads maintenance can be Minor or Major. Minor –

Patching.
• Patching involves the repair of random areas of substandard pavement,
not continuous widths/lengths

Patching can remedy the following defects:

1. problem related to the subgrade which will cause the failure of the
pavement’s foundation .

2. The aging of the bituminous surface, causing its break-up with the
consequent formation of potholes

3. Decreased load bearing capacity of the pavement due to the ingress of

water
 FORMS OF MAINTENANCE

Major Maintenance- bituminous pavements may

involve
1. removing all or part of the surface using a planer
and resurfacing the road,
2. laying a layer of bitumen over the existing one

Reasons for Overlaying and Resurfacing:

3. To strengthen the highway pavement
4. To replace defective materials
5. To restore skidding resistance
6. To improve riding quality.
 FACTORS THAT CAUSES ROAD DETERIORATION
1. Including variations in climate

2. Drainage

3. Soil conditions

4. Truck traffic

5. Neglect in preventive road maintenance – the basis for rehabilitation will be the
extent of complaints by road users.

6. Poor quality pavements (may cause crashes to occur, and user costs will significantly
increase Ideally)

7. preventive maintenance will be carried out in an orderly and systematic way and
will be the least-expensive approach in the long run. However, when funds are
extremely limited, agencies often respond to either the most pressing and severe
problems or the ones that generate the most vocal complaints.
 REASONS FOR INADEQUATE
MAINTENANCE
1. The most common reason is lack of funds.

2. Lack of qualified and skilled staff and

inefficient institutional structures

3. Too much emphasis on execution and

development of new projects but planning,
control and evaluation and maintenance
issues sidelined.

4. Poor supervision/ graft

 STEPS IN CONDUCTING ANNUAL
MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT
Maintenance management is normally undertaken as an annual cycle of
activities in the following steps:

• Setting of maintenance policy, objectives and standards

• Classification and preparation of road register

• Assessment of maintenance needs (condition surveys)

• Calculation of resource requirements

• Assessment of priorities when resources are constrained

• Scheduling and execution of works

 PAVEMENT FAILURE

• Pavement failure occurs when asphalt surface no longer

holds its original shape and develops material stress
which causes problems.

• Example includes:
– Alligator Cracking
– Block Cracking
– Rutting
– Longitudinal (Linear) Cracking
– Shoving
– Potholes
– Upheaval
 POTHOLES
Small, bowl-shaped depressions in the pavement surface that penetrate all
the way through the asphalt layer down to the base course

They are caused by the expansion and contraction of ground water after
water has entered the subbase
 ALLIGATOR CRACKING

• Alligator cracking is a load associated structural failure.

• The failure can be due to weakness in the surface, base or sub grade; a
surface or base that is too thin; poor drainage or the combination of all
three.
 LONGITUDINAL (LINEAR) CRACKING

• Longitudinal cracking are cracks that are parallel to the pavements

centerline or laydown direction.

• These can be a result of both pavement fatigue, reflective cracking, and/or

poor joint construction.
 RUTTING
• Ruts in asphalt pavements are channelized depressions in the wheel-
tracks.
• Rutting results from consolidation or lateral movement of any of the
pavement layers or the subgrade under traffic.
• It is caused by insufficient pavement thickness; lack of compaction of
the asphalt, stone base or soil; weak asphalt mixes; or moisture
infiltration
 PAVEMENT/ROAD MANAGEMENT
Pavement management is a systematic process for
maintaining, upgrading, and operating physical
pavement assets in a cost-effective manner.

The processes involved:

1. assess present pavement condition
2. predict future condition
3. conduct an alternative analysis
4. select an appropriate rehabilitation strategy
CATEGORIES MANAGEMENT WORKS