Data for Durability for Cement Concrete Pavement and Flexible Pavement in Expansive Soil Region

Abstract

In India more than 70% of the population lives in villages and their main source of livelihood is agriculture. Because of stringent environmental rules industries are now shifting towards villages. Both of these activities require a better means of communication which can be provided by good conditioned roads. Earlier village roads had low volume of traffic, consisting mostly of rural transport vehicles, like agricultural tractors/trailers, light goods vehicles, buses, animal drawn vehicles, motorized two-wheelers and cycles. Some of the rural roads used to have light and medium trucks carrying sugarcane, timber, quarry materials, etc. Kumar et al. (1998) presented a case study of Jaipur district of India regarding rural travel characteristics and highlighted the importance of the contribution of the access roads in rural development. As of now flexible pavements are preferred for village connectivity because of the type of traffic and low initial cost of construction. But due to high cost of maintenance, sensitivity to water logging and lack of institutional set up for the maintenance, village roads deteriorate very fast especially in Expansive soil regions. Every year their several kilometers are washed away by floods and water logging. Moreover, the nature of traffic is also changing due to industrial growth in the nearby areas. Rigid pavement is an alternative to flexible pavement where the soil strength is poor, aggregate are costly and the drainage conditions are bad (as in portions of the roads passing through villages and water logged areas). However, they demand a high degree of professional expertise at the design stage, construction and maintenance besides high initial cost. The guidelines have been developed by Indian Road Congress (1RC) for the design and construction of cement concrete pavements for village roads in year 2014, named as IRC: SP : 62 – 2014 However cement Concrete Pavements are also not a sustainable option in expansive soil Thus, the policy makers, planners and engineers are bound to think about a more suitable alternative pavement for rural roads in expansive soil.