Spanish technical regulation for road construction

Abstract

Abstract The new Technical Regulation for Road Construction (PG3) has applied in Spain since 2002 and governs execution of all the highways, expressways and motorways run by State Administration. The most important aspects introduced in this regulation in terms of the construction of fills are (1) extending the characteristics of the fill material to use as large a quantity as possible of the excavated ground in situ and to keep the amount sent to dump sites to a minimum; (2) to set up standards to regulate finished fills; and (3) to define a new type of random or quarry-run fill consisting of materials with a grading between earth and rock fill that were not in the earlier PG3 regulation. The new PG3 regulation refers to the construction of earth, rock and random fills, and pays particular attention to the placement, installation and the relevant control of the methods involved. In the case of earth fills, the control method involves fixing some preliminary characteristics for the soils to be used in fills, determined by laboratory tests, whereas for random and rock fills, the control consists of first creating test fills through which the previously established compaction procedure is accepted or modified. For random and rock fills, the control of the finished fill requires dividing the layers into set-sized sections and running tests on predetermined strips. The regulation also defines the criterion for acceptance or rejection of the zone being tested.