Structural Design of Roadbed and Pavement in Transition Section of Roads and Bridges

As the lifeline of social development,road and bridge projects are the main channel to realize resource transportation and economic circulation.Ensuring the quality of road and bridge project construction is crucial for the development of society,the economy,and people’s livelihoods.This paper studies the design of roadbed pavement structures in road and bridge transition sections.It aims to provide technical references and significance for China’s road and bridge engineering design and construction units,promoting scientific and standardized design in these actions.This will contribute to the safety and stable operation of road and bridge projects,offering effective technical support.Furthermore,it seeks to foster the sustainable and healthy development of China’s road and bridge engineering on a macro level.

Mechanistic-empirical pavement design guide(MEPDG):a bird's-eye view

Past editions of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials （AASHTO） Guide for Design of Pavement Structures have served well for several decades; nevertheless, many serious limitations exist for their continued use as the nation＇s primary pavement design procedures. Researchers are now incorporating the latest advances in pavement design into the new Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide （MEPDG）, developed under the National Cooperative Highway Research Program （NCHRP） 1-37A project and adopted and published by AASHTO. The MEPDG procedure offers several dramatic improvements over the current pavement design guide and presents a new paradigm in the way pavement design is performed. However, MEPDG is substantially more complex than the AASHTO Design Guide by considering the input parameters that influence pavement performance, including traffic, climate, pavement structure and material properties, and applying the principles of engineering mechanics to predict critical pavement responses. It requires significantly more input from the designer. Some of the required data are either not tracked previously or are stored in locations not familiar to designers, and many data sets need to be preprocessed for use in the MEPDG. As a result, tremendous research work has been conducted and still more challenges need to be tackled both in federal and state levels for the full implementation of MEPDG. This paper, for the first time, provides a comprehensive bird＇s eye view for the MEPDG procedure, including the evolvement of the design methodology, an overview of the design philosophy and its components, the research conducted during the development, improvement, and implementation phases, and the challenges remained and future developments directions. It is anticipated that the efforts in this paper aid in enhancing the mechanistic-empirical based pavement design for future continuous improvement to keep up with changes in trucking, materials, construction, design concepts, computers, and so on.

Potential of South African road technology for application in China

One of the main problems with roads and highways in China is the reflection cracking caused by the cement stabilized subbase layers passing through the overlying asphaltic layers. The cracks permit the ingress of moisture which softens the layers below the subbase resulting in loss of support and accelerated breakdown of the subbase layer and reduction in the tiding quality. The aim of this paper is to present the use of South African pavement design approach of deep structure and thin surfacing to overcome the existing problems. The deep pavement structure provides good long-term support and avoids the influence of moisture ingress, which means that only surfacing damage needs to be repaired. An unbound crushed stone base layer which is an integral component of the pavement structure limits reflection cracking. The paper first deals with the South African pavement design procedure and contrast this with the Chinese pavement design method. The inherent weaknesses of these methods are discussed and flowing from this discussion proposals for adapting the South African approach to China is presented. The resultant proposals have a high likelihood of success and will counteract the influences of extreme climate and rampant overloading that occurs on the Chinese roads.