ASPHALT PAVEMENT CONCRETE

What is asphalt concrete?

- it refers to a dense graded road surface made of hot mineral aggregates , mixed with
hot asphalt and laid at high temperature of about 275F-300F.
- It is the highest type of dense bituminous pavement suitable for the most heavily
travelled roads.

Asphalt concrete pavement consist of a combination of layers. The surface or asphalt

surface, base, subbase and subgrade.

So, What are their purpose?

- Asphalt concrete base is also called as a binder course. Its main purpose is to
distribute the load to the subbase.
- Subbase it is beneath the surface binder course and like the base , it provides
additional load distribution.
- And Subgrade or roadbed is the underlying soil which the pavement will be
constructed. Our roadbed should be compacted because as you can see in the
picture we have a load to support so the excess load came from base and subbase
will go to subgrade , so the subgrade should have enough strength to support the
load. Thats why we need to compact the roadbed before we laid the pavement to
ensure the strength and avoid failure.

The asphalt concrete pavement has a standard thickness, for lighjtly traveled road it
should be 2 inches and for heavily traveled road should have 6 inches or more.

BITUMINOUS PAVEMENT FAILURE

Based on my research there are three common factors influencing Bituminous pavement
failure: Traffic, Moisture or water and subgrade or roadbed.

Traffic it gives excessive load to our road surface. A heavily load creates deflection
on the road surface wherein repetitious application will roughen and crack the road
pavement that results to failure. So sinasabi dito that due to excessive load
and repeated heavy wheel on a road surface will roughen and crack the
asphalt surface and it results to failure.
Moisture or Water or lets say a Rain water which is the usual na nakakabasa ng
road natin. So after raining mababasa yung road surface natin and after drying where
did the rain water goes? Di ba sinipsip sya ng pavement through cracks and holes in
the aphalt surface so the rain water inside the pavement can significantly weaken the
support strength of natural gravel materials of pavement, especially the subgrade,
bakit pati subgrade? Because once the rainwater continously went down in
the subgrade, mababasa ito di ba compacted sya so lalambot yung soil and
it will create deflection leading to fatigue failure of the asphalt surface. So
this failure is also called as basement failure.
Subgrade it is the foundation on which the pavement will be constructed. If the
subgrade is too weak to support the wheel loads, the pavement will bend excessively
which ultimately causes the pavement to fail. So like what ive said a while ago
on the purpose of the subgrade. It should be compacted to ensure the
strength is enough to support the load. And sinabi sa soil mech natin na the
soil should have a relative compaction of 90-95% so dito sya ginagamit sa
paggagawa ng road. So if the relative compaction of roadbed didnt reach
90% so theres a high percentage of failure in subgrade and in pavement.