Engineering options for

Maintenance of Bituminous
Pavements

Dr. Padma Bahadur Shahi

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 Content
• Engineering options?
• Maintenance?
• Bituminous pavement and options for
maintenance
• Tips for maintenance works

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Engineering options for maintenance
• Engineering principles,
• Economic principles,
• Peoples expectations: overall objectives
of the road transport

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 Maintenance: an approach for asset
management
• A systematic process of maintaining,
upgrading and operating assets,
combining engineering principles with
sound business practice and economic
rationale, and providing tools to
facilitate a more organized and flexible
approach to making the decisions
necessary to achieve the public’s
expectations.
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Options

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 Maintenance management

• Defects, their symptoms, causes and

1 treatment

• Maintenance Inspection
2

• Work planning
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• Evaluation and Reporting

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Defects, their symptoms, causes and
treatment
• Standardization of defects
• Understanding of their occurrence,
• Most effective treatment

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 Maintenance Inspection
• Periodic task of the responsible
supervisors/engineers
• Identification of defects, reasons, and
appropriate remedial measures
• Inventory and update of road-register,

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Checklist for inspection
1. Safety
• Safety at blockage
• Damaged culverts/bridge/hor. and vert.
clearance/power lines/bridge and road
side trees
• Recent accident locations/threat of
reoccurrence of accident

2. Pavement
• Magnitude and location of potholes, undulations,
pavement failures, camber and super-elevation

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Checklist for inspection……

3. Shoulder and
embankments
• Side slope erosion, need for
turfing

4. drainages
• Adequacy of cross-section,
blockage, damage of bed slopes
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Checklist for inspection……

5. Road Furniture
• Location, cleaning and
repainting

6. Protection works
• Condition of retaining walls,
parapet walls, weep-holes,
pitching on slopes 11
Checklist for inspection……

7. Road side trees

• Obstruction of sight and threat to
the crash
• Disposal of old trees

8.Road geometrics
• Hor and Ver alignments sight
distances and intersections
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Checklist for inspection……
9. Additional points in hill
roads
• Catch-water drains, scuppers, safety
measures, danger of land slides

10. Road side materials

• Staked aggregate and other
construction materials obstruction
of safe traffic movement
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Checklist for inspection……

11. Encroachments
•Encroachment if any,
review of the actions for
their removal

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 Prioritization
• Emergency repairs, to road
breaches, flood damages,
removal of debris, dead animals,
Urgent other road blockage, collection
of accident information in the
prescribed format

• cleaning and deepening of

drains, checking and
Routine cleaning of bridge and
drainage culverts, repair of structures

works
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 Prioritization…..

Recurrent • Filling scoured

drainage areas, repair
of structures
works

Recurrent • Patching and

filling
work on holes of pot
pavement
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 Prioritization…

Other • Grading shoulders,

slopes, repairing/
routine replacing of road
furniture
works

• Surface
Periodic renewals
works
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 Prioritization…

• These are
results of
maintenance
Special inspections

repairs

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 Road surface maintenance
• More than 50 % of maintenance budget
is spent on the surface
maintenance/repair
• Maintenance should be preventive,
– Defects are corrected before they are
becoming more serious,
– Economic benefit for each repair works

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 Surface: Defects

Fatty surface

Hungry surface
Surface
defects
Smooth surface

Streaking
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 1. Fatty Surface (bleeding)
• Binder collected on the surface as a
film.
• It becomes soft in hot weather and may
be picked up and spread by the traffic.
• In cold weather, it may be slippery and
may cause accident.

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 Fatty surface: causes
• Excessive binder in a premix,
• Surface dressing:
– Loss of cover aggregates,
– Non-uniform spreading of aggregates
– Excessive application of binder
• Too heavy prime or tack coat,
• Excessive heavy axle loads, forcong
bitumen to the top

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 Fatty surface: treatment
• If bleeding if uniform and surface is free
from irregularities, application of cover
aggregates or sand,
• Seal coat with proper binder and and
aggregate size may be useful,
• Special methods of burning of excessive
bitumen,
• Incase of large area and unevenness,
removal of affected layer and replacing by
new,
• Resurfacing with surface dressing or a
premix carpet,
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 2. Smooth surface
• Low skid resistance when wet,
• Such sections are hazardous at
gradients, bends and intersections

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 Smooth surface: causes
• Polishing of aggregates under traffic,
• Excessive binder

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 Smooth surface: treatment
• Resurfacing with surface dressing with
hard angular aggregates,
• Premix carpet with open graded mix,

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 3. Streaking:
• Presence of alternate lean and heavy
lines of bitumen either in longitudinal or
transverse direction

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 Streaking: causes
• Non-uniform application of bitumen
across the surface,
• Mechanical fault, improper or poor
adjustment and careless operation of
bitumen distribution,

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 Streaking: treatment
• Removal of streaking surface and apply
new surface,
• Careful operation of bitumen distributor,

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 4. Hungry surface
• Loss of aggregates from surface,
• Appearance of fine cracks

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 Hungry surface: causes
• Use of less bitumen,
• Use of absorptive aggregates, in the
surface,

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 Hungry surface: treatment
• Apply slurry seal in 2- 5 mm,
• As an emergency repair fog seal may be
used

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 Crack: Defects

Hair-line cracks
Alligator cracks

Longitudinal cracks
Cracks
Edge cracks

Shrinkage cracks

Reflection 33
 1. Hair-line crack
• Short and fine cracks at close intervals
on the surface,

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 Hairline cracks: causes
• Insufficient bitumen content,
• Excessive filler at the surface,
• Improper compaction, over-
compaction, when supporting layer was
unstable, compaction of too hot mixture

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 All types cracks: treatment
• When the pavement is structurally
sound:
– Filling of cracks with low viscosity (cutback
or emulsion) binder,
– Wide cracks: wide cracks
– Fine cracks: fog seal
• Weak strength pavement:
– Rehabilitation or strengthening of pavment

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 2. Alligator cracking
• Interconnected cracks forming a series
of small blocks resembling the skin of
an alligator

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 Alligator cracking: causes
• Excessive deflection of the surface over
sub-grade, sub-base or base especially
along the wheel tracks
• Excessive overload by heavy vehicles or
inadequate pavement thickness or both
• Brittleness of binder either due to aging
of binder or initial over-heating might
cause fine alligator cracks,
•

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 3. Longitudinal cracks
• Cracks on the straight line, along the
road,
• Appear at the joint of the pavement and
the shoulder or between two paving
lines

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 Longitudinal cracks: causes
• (joint between the shoulder and
carriageway): Due to the wetting and
drying beneath the shoulder surface,
• Poor drainage of pavement edge,
• Shoulder settlement
• Lane joint cracks: differential settlement
of carriageway lanes,

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 4. Edge cracking
• Crack parallel to the outer edge of the
pavement (0.3 to 0.5 m) from edge,
• At times some transverse cracks branch
out from this crack

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 Edge cracks: causes
• Lack of lateral support from the shoulder,
• Settlement of under-laying layer,
• Inadequate surface drainage,
• Shrinkage of surrounding earth due to
roots of trees or bushes,
• Frost heave
• Inadequate pavement width causing the
traffic moving at the edge of the
carriageway
• No provision of extra width at the curves
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 5. Reflection Cracks
• Systematic cracks in a bituminous
surfacing over joint and cracks in the
pavement underneath.
• Pattern may be longitudinal, transverse
or diagonal,

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 6. Shrinkage cracks
• Cracks in transverse direction or
interconnected cracks forming a series
of large blocks

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 Shrinkage cracks: causes
• Shrinkage of bituminous layer with age,
• Binder loses its ductility as it ages and
becomes brittle,

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 Deformation: Defects

Slippage

Rutting

Corrugation
Deformation
Shoving

Shallow depression

Settlement and upheaval

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 1. Slippage
• Due to the wheel thrust

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 Slippage: causes
• Unusual thrust of wheels in the
particular direction
• Inadequate of tack or prime coat,
• Lack of bound between surface and
lower course caused by layers of fine
dust or moisture,
• Failure of bound due to the excessive
deflection of pavement

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 Slippage: treatment
• Removal of surface layer around the
area affected up to the point where
good bound between the surfacing and
the layer underneath exists and
patching the area with premix material
after tack coat

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 2. Rutting
• Longitudinal depression of wheel track:

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 Rutting: cause
• Heavy channelized traffic,
• Inadequate compaction of the mix at the
surface or in the underlying courses during
construction,
• Improper mix design, lacking in stability of the
mix to support the traffic and leading to plastic
movement,
• Weak pavement
• Incidence of high stress (e.g. bullock cart
traffic)
• Intrusion of sub-grade clay into base layer,
• Aggregates of surface dressing being pressed
into the lower supporting bituminous layer
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 Rutting: Treatment
• Filling with premix open graded or
dense graded patching material after
tack coat and compaction to the desired
level,
• Situation indicative shear failure or sub-
grade movement require excavation and
then applying the above treatment

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 3. Corrugation
• Undulation across the bituminous
surface

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 Corrugation: causes
• Lack of stability of mix (excessive
binder, high proportion of fines, too
much round or too smooth textures of
aggregates) too soft the binder,
• Oscillation set up by the vehicle spring
can cause alternative valley and ridge,
• Faulty laying of the surface curses,

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 Corrugation: treatment
• Scarifying and relaying of new surface,
• Cutting of high spots with blade and
filling of low spots,
• Spreading of sand bituminous premix
with a drag spreader with its blade
adjusted to clear the high spots, and
area then rolled.

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 4. Shoving
• Bulging of the road surface generally
parallel to the direction of traffic;
• horizontal displacement of surfacing
materials mainly in the direction of traffic
where braking or acceleration movement
occur

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 Shoving: causes
• Lack of stability in the mix in the surface
and base course,
• Lack of bond between bituminous
surface ad base course,
• Heavy traffic movement of start and
stop type (bus stops)
• Use of non-volatile oil on roller wheel

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 Shoving treatment
• Removal of material in the affected area
down to the firm base and laying a
stable patch

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 5. Shallow depression
• Localized shallow depression, dipping about 25
mm below the profile (normally will collect the
water

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 Shallow depression: causes
• Settlement of lower pavement layers
due to a pocket of inadequately
compacted sub-graded or pavement
layers
Treatment:
• Filled the premix materials, open graded
or dense graded and compacted to the
desired profiles as the surrounding
pavement

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6. Depression settlement and upheaval
• Large deformation of the pavement,
extreme uncomfortable to traffic,
generally followed by cracks

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 Depression settlement and upheaval:
causes

• Inadequate compaction of the fill at

locations near some structures,
• Excessive moisture in sub-grade and
permeable layer of sub-base and base
caused by capillary action or poor
drainage,
• Inadequate pavement thickness
• Frost heave conditions

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 Depression settlement and upheaval:
treatment
• Is inherent weakness in the fill, excavate
the defective fill and lay the embankment
afresh under properly controlled
conditions using materials having good
drainage quality,
• Construct sub-drainage if failure is caused
by drainage,
• Properly design pavement if inadqquate
pavement thickness,
• Frost affected regions may need complete
reconstruction of the pavement
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 Disintegration: Defects

Stripping

Loss of aggregates

Disintegration Raveling

Pot-hole

Edge breaking
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 1. Stripping:
• Separation of bitumen and aggregates
in the presence of water,

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 Stripping: causes
• Use of hydrophilic aggregates,
• Inadequate mix composition,
• Continuous contact of water with coated
aggregates,
• Initial overheating of aggregates or bitumen or
both,
• Presence of dust or moisture on aggregate when
mixing with bitumen,
• Surface dressing: poor bond with surface existing
below, delay in spreading the cover aggregates,
• Occurrence of dust or rain storm immediate after
the construction,
• Opening the traffic before the binder has set,
• Improper grade of bitumen,
• Aging of bitumen
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 Stripping: treatment
• Spreading and compacting hot coarse
sand, heated to at least 150 degree
Celsius,
• Replacement with fresh bituminous mix
with added anti-stripping agent,

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2. Loss of aggregates
• Surface presents a
rough appearance with
loss of aggregates in
some portions

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 Loss of aggregates: causes
• Aging and hardening of binder whereby
lost adhesive property,
• Cold weather before, during and after
the surface dressing,
• Wet or dusty aggregates used,
• Insufficient binder,
• Aggregates having no affinity to the
binder,
• Insufficient rolling before opening to
traffic
• Cold spraying of bitumen
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 Loss of aggregates: treatment
• Application of bitumen seal, fog seal, or
slurry seal depending on the extent of
damage

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 3. Raveling
• Failure of binder to hold the aggregate
shown up by eroded areas on the
surface,

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 Raveling: causes
• Inadequate compaction dueing
construction,
• Construction during wet weather,
• Construction during cold weather,
• Inferior quality of aggregates
• Insufficient binder in mix,
• Aging of aggregates

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 Raveling: treatment
• Correction by using the more quantity
of binder,
• Application of cutback bitumen covered
with coarse sand,
• Apply a renewal coat with premix
materials,

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 4. Potholes
• Bowl shaped holes of varying sizes in
the surface layer or extending into base
course caused by localized
disintegration of the materials

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 Potholes: causes
• Ingress of water into the pavement
through the surface,
• Open texture of surface,
• Lack of proper bond bituminous surface
under-laying WBM base, and poor tack-
coat,
• Insufficient bitumen content in localized
area,
• Too thin bituminous surface,

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 Potholes: treatments
• Filled with open or dense graded premix
patching.

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