The REAAA Technical Sub-committee on Pavements (Pavement Technology Committee, PTC) commenced its activities by conducting a PTC members’ meeting in May 2018 when the 108th REAAA Governing Council was held in Brisbane, Australia. Collaboration talks on relevant technical fields between REAAA and PIARC had taken place since the early stage of REAAA’s current cycle (2017-2021). The first PTC meeting and the exchange of opinions among the members led to the selection of the theme of ‘pavement design’ in the REAAA member countries,
The goals of the REAAA Pavement Technical Committee (PTC) reflect issues of major concern in REAAA member countries and also the need to be in line with the PIARC Strategic Plan:
- Investigate the challenges and incentives used in different countries to encourage the use of methods and materials that minimize the use of natural resources, reduce energy consumption and emissions, and improve health impacts during the lifetime of pavements (recycling, low temperature mixes/warm mix asphalt, new binders/aggregates).
- Evaluate available technologies and practices for better sustainability and management of low-cost pavement systems.
- Review the use of technology such as laser, image processing, etc. in pavement monitoring and evaluation techniques; ideally, contribute to state-of-the-art report on road condition monitoring and road/vehicle interaction to be presented at SURF 2017 Symposium in Brisbane in May 2017.
In line with this goals, the PTC sought approval from the REAAA Technical Committee and the REAAA Governing Council to develop a compendium on the current procedures used by each member country for the structural design and rehabilitation of their highway pavements.
It was agreed that the best way to derive the information sought was to develop a questionnaire on the current procedures being used for the design and rehabilitation of pavements in each member country. The contests of the survey covered a wide range of issues, ranging from general issues to structural design to road surface distress to repair methods.
This report presents details of the questionnaire, the responses and an analysis of the results in terms of consistency, or variations, in current practice.
It was confirmed that there is some consensus in terms of practice with similar procedures being used to manage pavements. These similarities are very important, because this assures that all members can easily benefit from the application of promising design or repair methodologies in the future without the need for unnecessary trials. By sharing knowledge and experience, implementation of a new technology can be steadily achieved in each country.
One possible avenue for future work could be to prepare a set of design criteria, with members asked to use their guidelines to develop a range of pavement scenarios which meet these criteria. The resulting pavement designs could then be compared.