Perpetual Pavement – A Boon for the Indian Roads

Dwindling resources and increasing cost of new construction and maintenance are prompting the highway agencies and concessionaires to step beyond the conventional and look for value engineered options for pavement type selection involving alternative design and pavement materials. Balancing short- and long-term performance with direct and life-cycle costs using optimum aggregate quantity for high-volume traffic corridor of multi-lane highway tends to be a challenging task. Thus, an engineered full-depth asphalt pavement is proposed as a sustainable perpetual solution to heavy traffic and the best socio- economic interest. A total of three scenarios depending on different levels of traffic or laning and different categories of subgrade strength are studied in this paper. Value Engineering is incorporated via life-cycle cost analysis. Life-cycle cost is considered to include the initial or direct cost of construction, cost of rehabilitation/reconstruction, and cost of potential maintenance regime. This paper studies a total of seven types of pavement including conventional, semi-rigid, recycled white- top and rigid pavement sections along with their perpetual counterparts followed by respective life cycle cost analyses. Both initial construction and life cycle costs do reflect their dependence on the type of the pavement, the traffic category and cost of materials in the particular project area. At the same time, with the progressive ban on mining, consideration of future availability of aggregates is emphasized in the paper. The paper aims in spreading awareness that a holistic approach considering all pavement types in conjunction with life cycle cost analyses and availability of aggregate materials shall be duly considered as a socio-economical option for our future highway projects.