Evaluation of Pavement Support for Pavement Design

Abstract

AbstractIt is well-known that the performance of Portland cement concrete (PCC) pavement depends, to a great extent, on the support condition under the slab. The Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) recognized the importance of the support condition and requires the use of a stabilized base, either a 10.16-cm hot mix asphalt layer or a minimum 2.54-cm asphalt concrete over a 15.24-cm cement-stabilized layer. For pavement design purposes, 81.4 MPa/m has been used as the default value for the modulus of the subgrade reaction (k value) for the support provided by these bases. The use of a single value of 81.4 MPa/m for the k value in rigid pavement design was partly because of the insensitivity of the required slab thickness to the modulus of the subgrade reaction in the current TXDOT rigid pavement design procedure. To improve rigid pavement design, TXDOT developed a new design procedure for continuously reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP) on the basis of mechanistic-empirical principles and plans t...