Rigid Pavement Works

About Rigid Pavement Works

Rigid pavements normally use Portland cement concrete as the prime structural element. Depending on conditions, engineers may design the pavement slab with plain, lightly reinforced, continuously reinforced, prestressed, or fibrous concrete.The concrete slab usually lies on a compacted granular or treated subbase, which is supported, in turn, by a compacted subgrade. The subbase provides uniform stable support and may provide subsurface drainage. The concrete slab has considerable flexural strength and spreads the applied loads over a large area.

A highway pavement is a structure consisting of superimposed layers of processed materials above the natural soil sub-grade, whose primary function is to distribute the applied vehicle loads to the sub-grade. The pavement structure should be able to provide a surface of acceptable riding quality, adequate skid resistance, favorable light reflecting characteristics, and low noise pollution. The ultimate aim is to ensure that the transmitted stresses due to wheel load are sufficiently reduced, so that they will not exceed bearing capacity of the sub-grade. Two types of pavements are generally recognized as serving this purpose, namely flexible pavements and rigid pavements. This chapter gives an overview of pavement types, layers, and their functions, and pavement failures. Improper design of pavements leads to early failure of pavements affecting the riding quality.

A road surface or pavement is the durable surface material laid down on an area intended to sustain vehicular or foot traffic, such as a road or walkway. In the past, gravel road surfaces, cobblestone and granite setts were extensively used, but these surfaces have mostly been replaced by asphalt or concrete laid on a compacted base course. Road surfaces are frequently marked to guide traffic. Today, permeable paving methods are beginning to be used for low-impact roadways and walkways.

The concrete slab provides structural support to the aircraft,provides a skid-resistant surface, and prevents the infiltration of excess surface water into the subbase.The subbase provides uniform stable support for the pavement slab. The subbase also serves to control frost action, provide subsurface drainage, control swelling of subgrade soils, provide a stable construction platform for rigid pavement construction, and prevent mud pumping of fine-grained soils.