EVALUATION OF RIGID PAVEMENTS BY DEFLECTION APPROACH

Akshay Gadiya, Sagar Bhor, Parimal Parchure, Ankkit Bafna

Abstract: Since 1951 there has been a sevenfold increase in the Indian road network while the traffic has increased 120 times. This leads to the deterioration of the surface of the pavements. Deterioration of pavements may be functional or structural in nature. Evaluation and timely assessment of pavement condition will help to judge the necessary steps to be taken to improve pavement conditions. Pavement surface deflection measurements are one of the primary means of evaluating a flexible pavement structure. ‘Benkelman Beam Deflection (BBD) Technique is used to find out the characteristic deflection for flexible pavement. The testing and analysis by BBD technique finally provides us with overlay thickness in terms of Bituminous Macadam. The use of BBD technique may not be only limited to evaluate flexible pavements. Evaluation of newly constructed rigid pavements on the basis of Load Transfer Efficiency of dowel bars gives an idea of the overall performance. The accuracy of evaluating load transfer efficiency (LTE) of joint is important to estimate whether the dowel is disabled or not. The ratio of the edge deflection of unloaded slab to the edge deflection of loaded slab is used as index to evaluate LTE of joint. The objective of this paper is to find out the utility of Benkelman Beam Deflection Test on rigid pavements. In this paper based on the known deflection relationship between loaded and unloaded slab calculated with the help of two Benkelman beams which is a technique generally used to determine the overlay thickness for flexible pavements. A rigid pavement road stretch (Swami Vivekanand Road) constructed 2 years ago in Pune city was evaluated using BBD technique. Deflections measured on slabs (loaded slab and unloaded slab) across the dowel bars would give a measure of the load transfer efficiency of the dowel bars

Keywords: Rigid Pavement, Benkelman Beam Deflection Test, Load Transfer Efficiency

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2015.0406096