UTW: Ultra-thin whitetopping

Overlaying technique of pavement rehabilitation is well known and widely practiced. However,
ultra thin whitetopping (UTW) of concrete over existing bituminous pavement is a relatively new
concept. UTW can be designed for low-speed, low volume traffic areas such as street
intersections, aviation taxiways and runways, bus stops and tollbooths.
In this technique, a thin layer of high-strength, fiber-reinforced concrete is placed over a clean,
milled surface of distressed bituminous concrete pavement to achieve a full or partial bonding.
Bonding makes the two layers behave as a monolithic unit and share the load. Due to bonding,
the neutral axis in concrete shifts from the middle of concrete layer towards its bottom. This
results in a lowering of stresses at the bottom of concrete layer. Thick composite section
behaviour causes the corner stresses to decrease. On the other hand, downward shifting of neutral
axis may cause critical load location to shift from edges to corners thus increasing the corner
stresses. Short joint spacing is used to decrease the slab area that can curl or warp thus
minimizing the corresponding stresses (MTTP 2004). A schematic diagram of UTW have been
presented in Figure-9.

Figure -9 Flexible composite

pavement using UTW

UTW is an excellent resurfacing option for deteriorated bituminous pavements which otherwise
require frequent repair or overlays.
Following are some of the advantages of a UTW system (CAC 2004, Murison 2002):
It is beneficial for repair of roads and intersections having problems of rutting, cracks, and
poor drainage.
It provides improved skid resistance.

 Its light colour reflects more light than bituminous pavement.

Its heat-reflecting property can help to lower the average city temperature.
It is less costly to maintain, than conventional flexible pavements, and does not require
frequent resurfacing and repairs.
The UTW concrete resists bitumen aging.
The UTW concrete prevents degradation of bituminous surface due to fuel spills.
It causes minimal traffic disruption due to faster construction and repair procedure.
Its small panels are ideal for utility maintenance.

References
http://nptel.ac.in/courses/105104098/TransportationII/mod-2-lec-1/lecture2/2-4-fiberreinforced-bituminous.htm
File: brief-UTW

Perpetual pavement
A perpetual bituminous pavement may be defined as a pavement designed and built to last longer
than fifty years without requiring major structural rehabilitation or reconstruction (APA101
2001). This pavement may only require periodic replacement of top wearing surface and
recycling of old pavement material (TRL 2001; AA-2 2001).
The concept of full depth bituminous pavement is in vogue from 1980s in USA. Nunn and his
associates of Transport Research Laboratory, UK found (Nunn et al., 1997) that thick bituminous
pavements tend to show long lasting performance and may require only minor surface repairs.
California Department of Transportation in collaboration with University of California, Berkeley
(Monismith et al., 2001) first implemented concept of perpetual pavement in a rehabilitation
planning project.
In full depth bituminous pavement, the thickness is so designed that the fatigue and rutting
strains developed are below the permissible limit (MS-1 1999 ). If the thickness is chosen to be
sufficiently large so that the fatigue strain is close to the endurance limit, then the fatigue life
becomes very long, and the pavement may be said to have attended 'perpetual life'. A perpetual
pavement, in general, is made up of the following layers:

The top wearing surface is designed in such a way that it is water-tight as well as
removable and hence replaceable. Stone Matrix Asphalt (SMA) or Open Graded Friction

Course (OGFC) are recommended. They also produce less noise due to tyre-pavement
interaction.

The intermediate layer is constituted with good quality aggregates and designed to be
strongly resistive to rutting.

The bottom part is made resistant to fatigue cracking by making it rich in bitumen and
choosing a gradation that has less voids.

Figure 11 Layer composition of a perpetual

pavement.
Figure-11 schematically represents the layer composition of a typical perpetual pavement.
A perpetual pavement is a full depth bituminous pavement in most of the cases. The principles
based on which it is designed (mix design and structural thickness design) are the following:

The pavement layers are chosen in such a way that they are rut resistive. The pavement is
chosen to be adequately thick such that the vertical subgrade strain is low. Since subgrade
contributes to the major part of rutting, low vertical subgrade strain would cause low
level of rutting.

The wearing surface should be adequately water-proof. The surface should be so

designed that it can be repaired or recycled and the whole pavement will not require any
major reconstruction (AA-2 2001).

The thickness of the bituminous layer is chosen in such a way that the horizontal tensile
strain (t) developed is less than the endurance limit (refer Figure-12) of the bituminous
mix, hence its laboratory fatigue life (N) becomes infinity (AA2-2001, Nunn et al. 1997).
It is justifiable to design the pavement as 'bottom rich' (refer to next section), which shifts
the endurance limit to higher level.

The temperature gradient tends to be steeper towards the surface of the pavement (TRL
2001, Newcomb 2001) as shown schematically in Figure-12. Therefore the bituminous
mixes with temperature susceptible binder should be avoided as surface course. Use of
modified binder could be helpful in this regard.

Figure 12
Idealized diagram of fatigue characteristics of
bituminous mixes.

References
http://nptel.ac.in/courses/105104098/TransportationII/mod-2-lec-1/lecture3/3-3perpetual-pavement.htm

Inverted pavements

Inverted pavement system, or inverted base, is a high depth pavement whose supporting
layers are thicker and stiffer than top layers.

The system consists of a thin bituminous concrete (BC) layer provided on top of a graded
aggregate base (GAB) layer. A portland cement-treated stiff base layer is provided at the
bottom.

This arrangement causes the critical stress/strain plane to be located at the interface of the
BC and GAB layers. Thus only the top portion of the inverted pavement structure absorbs
the traffic loads as compared to conventional design where thick sections are required for
load distribution.

Research by South African Roads Board (SARB 2004) and Georgia Department of
Transportation, has shown that an inverted base provides enough structural performance
to support traffic loadings up to 100 million Equivalent Single-Axle Loads (ESAL s) with
a maximum two inch bitumen riding course (Halsted, 2002). According to SARB, this
type of system proves to be more cost effective for construction of long lasting
pavements.

Bituminous pavement with cemented base

The cemented bases are derived from aggregates mixed with some binding material.
Since it is bounded layer, it also has some fatigue life.

Thus, unlike the unbound granular base, the cemented base layer contributes to some
fatigue life, which may give rise to comparative reduction of design thickness of
bituminous layer (Das and Pandey 1998).

The stiffness modulus of cemented layer is generally found to be much higher than
granular sub-base; however, due to shrinkage cracks, the stiffness modulus falls rapidly.

This change in stiffness values at different stages of the design life has been
schematically shown in Figure-15(a) and Figure-15(b) presents a typical design chart for
design of bituminous pavement with cemented base made up of lime-soil mixture.

15 (a) Change of elastic modulus of15 (b) A typical design chart of bituminous
cemented bases at different phases.
pavement with cemented base (LS lime soil)

References
http://nptel.ac.in/courses/105104098/TransportationII/mod-2-lec-1/lecture3/3-5-invertedpavements.htm
Binder (bitumen) modification
Binder (bitumen) modification is done with the help of additives which may or may not react
chemically with bitumen. Table 1 presents a partial list of various types of binder modifiers, their
purpose and examples. Binder modification results improvement of one or more properties of the
binder (and hence the mix) viz. fatigue resistance, stiffness modulus, rutting resistance, stripping
potential, temperature susceptibility, oxidation potential etc.
Table 1. Some examples of binder (bitumen) modifiers
(RILEM 1998; ETM 1999; Asphalt Handbook 2000; Widyatmoko 2002, SEAM 2004 )

Non Polymers

Fillers

Anti-oxidants

Anti-stripping additives

Extenders

Polymers

Fibers

Plastics
-Thermoplastics

-Thermosets

3. Elastomers
- Natural
- Synthetic
- Reclaimed rubbers

For conventional binders, it is generally observed that the mixes with high stiffness modulus (E)
show low fatigue life, and vice versa. However, for an economical pavement design, both high

elastic modulus as well as high fatigue life is desirable. Through binder modification, this
particular disadvantage can be avoided. Figure 5 presents this concept schematically.
Figure 5: Schematic diagram explaining the advantage of binder modification.

As can be seen in Figure 5, for mixes with ordinary binder, although elastic modulus E value is
higher initially at low temperatures, at high E value the fatigue performance generally becomes
poor. On the other hand, at high temperature the E value becomes too low and the mix becomes
soft. The bituminous mixes with modified binder does not allow the mix to be too hard (high E
value) or too soft (low E value) at low and high temperatures respectively. Thus the stiffness
versus temperature curve takes a 'S-shape' as shown in Figure 5.

Aggregate modification

The marginal or poor quality aggregates can be improved by using some cementing
material such as cement, lime, pozzolanic substance etc.

The proportions of the cementing material and other ingredients (like water) can be
suitably estimated in the laboratory.