Types of road construction are significant to understand the category of roads and their characteristics. In this blog, we will find out the details of 5 types in detail.
5 Types of road construction
In this section, the important types of road construction is broken down in detail.
Whitetopping roads
- Whitetopping is the coating of a layer of Portland cement concrete on the existing asphalt pavement.
- Depending on the thickness of the concrete sheet and if the layer is bonded to the asphalt substrate, whitetopping is divided into different types.
- The main objective of an overlay is either to restore the existing pavement or to improve the load-carrying capacity, or both.
- In achieving this goal, in addition to rectifying other defects such as loss of texture, overlays often restore the ride-ability of existing pavements that have experienced rutting and deformation.
- Asphalt is considered to be much less robust and powerful than most other alternatives and is therefore not the best for the setting.
Polymer fiber reinforced concrete roads
Polymer fiber reinforced concrete roads are a type of road construction method extensively followed now a days.
- Polymeric fibres are now used because they are cost-effective and have no chance of corrosion.
- Polymeric fibres are either polyester or polypropylene that are normally used.
- FRC material technology, including highways, local streets, intersections, parking lots, bus pads, sidewalks, driveways, bridge decks, pavement overlays, manufacturing floors, airfield pavement overlays, and patches, is used for a large number of pavement applications.
- FRC may be used for new construction as well as for maintenance (patching), rehabilitation (overlays), and reconstruction.
- The use of FRC for bonded concrete overlays on asphalt or composite pavements has seen substantial growth in the past few years for minor pavement rehabilitation.
- The thickness of an asphalt bonded concrete overlay (BCOA) varies from 3 to 6 in., and the thinner installations were the majority of FRC overlays of this kind.
Bituminous roads
- Bituminous surface treatment (BST) or chip seal is primarily used as a sealing coat to rejuvenate asphalt concrete pavement, but also on low-traffic highways.
- It typically consists of aggregate spread over an asphalt emulsion sprayed-on or asphalt cement cut-back.
- By rolling it, usually with a rubber-tired roller, the aggregate is then deposited in the asphalt.
- “A broad range of regional words, like “chip seal,” “tar and chip,” “oil and stone,” “seal coat,” “sprayed seal,” or “surface dressing,” or simply “bitumen,” define this form of surface.
- These are laid down using specialised and proprietary equipment.
- In urban areas where the roughness and lack of stone associated with chip seals are deemed inappropriate.
Composite pavement road
- In composite pavements, portland cement concrete sublayer is mixed with asphalt.
- Usually, they are used to rehabilitate existing roadways. To restore a smooth wearing surface, asphalt overlays are sometimes laid over distressed concrete.
- For reflective crack management, geosynthetics can be used.
- A heavyweight is dropped on the concrete with breakage and seat and crack and seat processes to cause cracking, then a heavy roller is used to seat the resulting parts into the subbase.
- The machinery used to crack the concrete pavement and the scale of the resulting fragments is the key difference between the two methods.
- The hypothesis is that regular small cracks disperse thermal stress over a wider area than uncommon large joints, minimising the strain on the asphalt pavement overlying it.
- Rubblization is a more complete fracturing of the old, worn-out concrete that essentially turns the old pavement into a new asphalt road aggregate base.
Gravel road
- Two distinct uses of road surfacing have been used to add gravel, or “metalling.”
- Second, the highway path would have been dug down several feet and French drains may or may not have been installed, depending on local conditions.
- Large stones were then positioned and compacted, accompanied by successive layers of smaller stones until the road surface consisted of small stones that had been compacted into a rough, durable surface.
- “Road metal” later became the name of stone chippings combined with tar to form the tarmac material for the road surface.
- The decision on whether or not to pave a gravel road also depends on the amount of traffic.
- Maintenance costs for gravel roads have been found to sometimes exceed maintenance costs for paved or surface-treated roads if the traffic level reaches 200 vehicles a day.
I hope you found the article insightful. Let me know in comments if you have any doubts.
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