RATIONAL DESIGN CRITERIA FOR LOW VOLUME ROADS

BY

Dr. U. C. Sahoo, BIT Mesra Dr. M. Amaranatha Reddy Prof. K. Sudhakar Reddy IIT Kharagpur, India

PIARC International seminar- SUSTAINABLE MAINTENANCE OF RURAL ROADS Rural Road System and Accessibility to Rural Areas 21-23 January 2010

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Introduction
Other district roads (ODR) and village roads (VR) - rural roads in India covering about 80% of the total road length of the country Rural transport sector is generally deprived of funds In the absence of rational and practical guidelines and specifications for the design, construction and maintenance, rural roads have generally not been able to provide satisfactory service

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Introduction
A large number of roads are being constructed under the Prime Ministers rural connectivity programme (PMGSY) Roads - designed as per the guidelines given in IRC:SP:20 (2002) and IRC:SP:72 (2007) Do not refer to any mechanistic principles and there is also no reference to any documented performance data that formed the basis for these documents

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Failed Road

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Failed Road

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Introduction
Need to develop a rational design criterion for rural roads For development of a rational criterion, evaluation of performance of in-service pavements is essential NRRDA has initiated a study on rural roads named Rural Roads Pavement Performance Study An attempt has been made here to develop a mechanistic-empirical performance criterion for rural roads using the data collected from the eastern part of the country

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Performance Criteria
Most of the mechanistic-empirical flexible pavement design methods consider the cracking of bound layers and rutting along the wheel paths as main distresses to be addressed In the case of low volume roads, the bituminous surfacing is usually thin (less than 40 mm) and is not expected to contribute significantly to the structural capacity

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Performance Criteria
Another simple parameter used to evaluate pavement performance is roughness, which reflects the user perspective Rutting and roughness have been identified as two major distresses in case of thin surfaced granular pavements

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Methodology
Field Investigations Material Characterization Mechanistic Evaluation Laboratory Investigations

Performance of Pavements

Traffic

Performance Criteria/ Design Criteria

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Subgrade Strain Criterion

z = aN

Granular Layer

z , z

E1, 1

Subgrade

E2, 2

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Performance Evaluation
Site Selection PMGSY roads in Pashim Medinipur, West Bengal 200m length 19 test sections

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Field Investigations
Field Performance Evaluation

Structural Evaluation

Functional Evaluation

Surface Manifestation

In-Situ Strength

Visual Assessment

Roughness

Longitudinal Depression

Rutting Deflection Penetration

Cracking Ravelling Potholes Patching

Using MERLIN

Falling Weight Deflectometer

Dynamic Cone Penetrometer

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Evaluation of Pavements using FWD

Evaluation of pavement condition under dynamic loading is considered to be more rational FWD developed at Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (Reddy 2003) was used for the deflection studies

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Evaluation using IITFWD

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Evaluation of Pavements using DCP

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Measurement of Rut depth and Roughness

Measurement of Rut depth with Straight edge

Measurement of Roughness using MERLIN

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Laboratory Investigations
Liquid Limit and Plastic Limit Percentage Passing IS 75 Sieve Standard Proctor Compaction Test California Bearing Ratio Test Unconsolidated Undrained Triaxial Compression Test Resilient Modulus Test

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

MECHANISTIC EVALUATION OF PAVEMENT SECTIONS

Test sections were analysed as two layer systems using 3D finite element model
K- model developed by Pandey and Naidu (1994) for granular materials has been adopted in the present study

M R = 3.47 ( )

0.7375

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

TRAFFIC Traffic Volume Count Axle Load data Load Equivalency Factor Vehicle Damage Factor (VDF) Traffic Growth Rate (6 %)

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Axle Load Survey

The loading pattern on these roads is highly seasonal and cannot be captured by an axle load survey conducted in a particular season Details of goods carried by the commercial vehicles were separately surveyed for this purpose Typical axle load characteristics were obtained for different combinations of vehicle type and loading conditions

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Avg ESALs for Different Commercial Vehicles

Vehicle LCV Truck Truck Truck Truck Truck Truck Truck Truck Truck Truck Bus Type of Goods Laden Empty Moorum, Boulder, Stones Bricks Cement Sand Wood logs Paddy/ Rice Vegetables/ Fruits Fish/ Food Items Goods/ Miscellaneous Items Passengers Average ESAL 0.3 0.2 16.3 11.2 5.8 8.8 6.6 11.5 5.0 1.5 7.9 1.6

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Vehicle Damage Factor

The VDF values for individual test sections vary between 1.70 and 3.39. IRC: 37 (2001) recommends a value of 1.5 for roads carrying traffic less than 150 commercial vehicles per day

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Terminal Condition
Riding Quality Survey A panel of experts travelled over some selected low volume road sections at a speed of 50 km/h Rated the pavements on a scale of 0 to 5 (0 for very poor to 5 for very good)

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Threshold limits
Riding Quality Roughness IRI (m/km) < 4.5 4.5 5.5 5.5-6.7 6.7-8.5 > 8.5 Average Rut Depth (mm) <2 2-5 5-13 13-25 >25 Average Longitudinal Depression (mm) <3 3-4 4-5.5 5.5-7.3 >7.3

Very Good Good Fair Poor Very Poor

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Pavement Life
Pavement life was computed in terms of cumulative standard axle load repetitions using a traffic growth rate of 6%. The rutting and roughness trends were extrapolated to estimate the life of pavement for reaching the terminal conditions of 25 mm rut depth and 8.5 IRI (m/km) respectively

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Subgrade Strain Criterion Developed Subgrade Strain criterion considering nonlinearity of granular layer

z = 0.029 N

0.272

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

South Africa (Theyse et al., 1996) 10000 Vertical Subgrade Strain () Shell (1978) Austroads (2004) Author

1000

100 1.0E+02

1.0E+03

1.0E+04

1.0E+05

1.0E+06

1.0E+07

1.0E+08

Standard Axle Load Repetitions

Rational Design Criteria for Low Volume Roads

Conclusions
To make the roads sustainable, design should be accurate and economical Nonlinear material property of the granular layer should be taken into account in mechanistic analysis Terminal condition Roughness of 8.5 IRI Rutting of 25 mm Mechanistic Empirical Performance Criterion

Acknowledgement National Rural Roads Development Agency, New Delhi