Design of Flexible Pavement
Design of Flexible Pavement
Design of Flexible Pavement
IRC 37 History
IRC: 37 - 1970 & 1984 => Empirical (Experienced based approach), based on subgrade
strength (CBR) and Traffic (CV with laden wt>3 tonnes /day)
IRC: 37 – 2001 => Semi Mechanistic approach (Mechanistic – empirical), Use of FPAVE
Software, concept of linear elastic layered pavement systems developed, Design for
traffic less than 150 msa.
IRC: 37 – 2012 => Mechanistic – Empirical performance models for rutting in subgrade
and bottom up cracking in bituminous layer, Fatigue criteria included for CTB, design for
traffic more than 150 msa.
IRC: 37 – 2018 => recommendation of better performing bituminous mix, guidelines for
selection of appropriate elastic moduli, minimum thickness of granular and CTB layers
from functional requirements.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
• For satisfactory functional and structural performance of the pavement during is intended service
life.
• Performance of Pavement
• 1. Purely empirical (based on past experience)
• 2. Mechanistic – Empirical
Mechanistic - Using Linear Elastic Layered Theory to calculate Deflection/ strain
Empirical - Using Past experience to calculate stress/ strains
Where,
NR = Number of cumulative standard axles,
and
εv = Vertica l compressive strain in the
subgrade.
Rutting
Criterion
Fatigue Cracking Criteria – Bituminous Layer
• The occurrence of fatigue cracking (appearing as inter connected cracks), whose total
area in the section of the road under consideration is 20 % or more than the paved
surface area of the section, is considered to be the critical or failure condition.
• The equivalent number of standard axle (80 kN) load repetitions that can be served by the
pavement, before the critical condition of the cracked surface area of 20 % or more occurs, is
given by equations below respectively for 80 % and 90 % reliability levels.
Where,
RF = Reliability factor for cementitious materials for failure against fatigue.
= 1 for Expressways, National Highways, State Highways and Urban Roads and for
other roads having Design traffic > 10 msa.
= 2 for others cases
N = Fatigue life of the cementitious material.
E = Elastic modulus of cementitious material (MPa).
ε t = tensile strain in the cementitious layer, (microstrain).
Reliability
20kN
20kN h1 E1
μ1
h2 E2
μ2
310mm E3
E1 > E2 > μ3
E3
Loading Consideration:
Standard axle load (80 kN) – only one dual wheel is
considered. Tyre Pressure – 0.56MPa to 0.80MPa.
analysis.
σ d = deviator stress
εr = recoverable elastic
strain
Resilient Modulus- Subgrade & Subbase
Resilient modulus is the measure of its elastic behaviour determined from repeated
triaxial test on representative soil sample for soil subgrade and granular layer.
In the absence of the equipment the default resilient modulus can be determined
from
generally acceptable correlations
Subgrade Soil:
M RS (MPa) = 10 x CBR for CBR <= 5%
= 17.6 x (CBR) 0.64 for CBR > 5%
M RS = Resilient modulus of subgrade soil.
Granular Layer:
MRgranular = 0.2 x h 0.45 x MR subgrade
Where h = thickness of granular sub-base and base in mm
Resilient Modulus – Bituminous
Layer
Different types of bituminous mixes used in India are
Cemented base layers may consist of aggregates or soils or both stabilized with chemical
stabilizers such as cement, lime, lime-flyash or other stabilizers which are required to give a
minimum strength of 4.5 to 7 MPa in 7/28 days.
Recommended Material Properties for Structural Layers
PERPETUAL PAVEMENT
Commercial vehicles having gross vehicle weight of 3 tonnes or more and their
axle-loading is considered for pavement design.
Traffic count is made in accordance with IRC: 9-2015 on seven-day 24-hour traffic
volume count.
Design Traffic
Traffic Growth Rate
• To be estimated as per IRC: 108 (2016)
• Assume 5% if no data is available.
Design Period
• NH, SH and Urban Roads - 20 Years
• Other category of Roads - 15 Years
• High Density Corridors - 30 Years
(more than 300 msa)
Design Traffic
Lateral Distribution of commercial traffic
Single - lane road - 100% of two-way traffic
2-lane single carriageway - 50% of two-way traffic
4-lane single carriageway - 40% of two-way traffic
• Equivalency Factor =
• Doubling the load means 16 times more damage than the standard load.
Example
Say, Axle
Load 70 160 kN 300 kN
kN
4 160 4 300 4
VDF 70 [ ] [ ]
[ ] 148 224
Calculation 65
=1.35 =1.37 =3.22
CBR value of the subgrade is less than 2 per cent, the design should be based on
subgrade CBR value of 2 per cent ad a capping layer of 150 mm thickness of material
with a minimum CBR of 10 percent shall be provided in addition to the sub – base.
Recommended minimum thickness of granular base is 100 mm for traffic upto 5msa and
200 mm for traffic exceeding 5 msa.
The thickness of any layer to be stabilized shall be not less than 100 mm
when
compacted.
Pavement Composition – Bituminous
Layer
Bituminous Layer = Wearing Course
or
= Wearing course + Binder course