ABSTRACT

AASHO road test conducted by American Association of State Highway and Transportation
Officials in the late 1950’s is the first systematically conducted test data on pavement
performance with different pavement layer compositions and different axle load repetitions.
Based on AASHO road test results AASHTO-1961 was released with empirical design formulae
for pavement structural design for both flexible and rigid pavements which was subsequently
updated and released in 1972 and 1993. For many years this remained the source/ inspiration for
majority of the pavement design manuals across the world, until the recent times when most of
these codes/manuals were updated and rewritten to suit the weather, axle load composition and
performance characteristics of pavements in respective countries. Indian Roads Congress’s code
IRC-37 for design of flexible pavements was based on AASHTO.

It is observed that IRC designs were very much optimized and updated that in most cases IRC
gave most economical section compared to AASHTO1993, and these designs were very close to
those given by AUSTROADS and DMRB too showing the level of upgradation of IRC37 based
on research and field performance studies. Flexible pavement designs and performance
predictions for pavements containing one of more bound layers derived from the mechanistic
Austroads pavement design methodology and the AASHTO-2004 approach are compared for
Australian conditions, with consideration of subgrade and other material properties and local
design preferences.
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION
Most part of the highway network in India constitutes flexible pavements. The design of flexible
pavement is a challenging task as the behavior of bituminous mix is temperature dependent and
seasonal variations in temperature are high in India. In addition to that the subgrade strength
varies with seasons and locally available materials. Properties to vary substantially from one
place to another. This makes the prediction of pavement service life uncertain. This is type of
uncertainty is present in many countries. When it comes to pavement structural design or
prediction of pavement service life. This uncertainties or lack of concrete data on the behavior of
flexible pavements lead to the development of empirical design procedures from AASHO road
test in early 1950’s. AASHO road test is one of the first complete pavement study to be
conducted in the world. The data and results from the AASHO road test lead to the development
of AASHTO- 1993, code for structural design of flexible and rigid pavements. This is the source
of inspiration for majority of pavement design codes in the world. IRC: 37 was originally based
on the AASHTO-1993 empirical design charts later on like many developed countries, India too
started research on pavements and improved the original design charts based on the mechanistic
design procedures. The failure criteria chosen for mechanistic design were fatigue of asphalt
layer and rutting of subgrade. And almost all countries adopted these same criteria.

1.1 Review of Austroads and AASHTO Design Method

The aim of pavement design is to select the most economical pavement thickness and
composition which will provide a satisfactory level of service for anticipated traffic. To achieve
the desired project reliability in the mechanistic design of flexible pavements it is necessary to
use an appropriate performance relationship to estimate allowable loading from the calculated
strains induced by a standard axle for each of three distress modes. The purpose of structural
analysis is to quantify the critical strains and/or stresses which are induced by the traffic loading
in the trial pavement configuration. Here, it is usual to represent pavements as a series of layers
of distinct property. The pavement layers may be considered to be fully elastic or viscoelastic,
uniform in lateral extent, or variable, and with full friction, or no friction, between the layers.
These variations have been used in an attempt to obtain theoretical estimates which agree with
observed reactions to traffic loading.

1.2 Subgrade

In the Austroads method the units of subgrade support are the California Bearing Ratio (CBR)
and elastic parameters-vertical modulus (Ev), horizontal modulus (Eh) and Poisson's ratio (ν).
For thickness design purposes using mechanistic procedures, subgrade materials are assumed to
be elastic and cross-anisotropic. A cross-anisotropic material is characterized by five parameters
– two moduli (vertical, horizontal), and two Poisson’s ratios (vertical and horizontal) and the
additional stress parameter (f). The ratio of vertical to horizontal modulus is assumed to be 2 and
both Poisson’s ratios are assumed to be equal. The stress parameter f can be determined using the
following relationship

………………………………………….(1)

The vertical modulus of subgrade can be determined from laboratory testing or by using the
empirical relationship in which modulus in MPa is equal to 10 times CBR.

This relationship is, at best, an approximation and modulus has been found to vary in the range 5
× CBR to 20 × CBR . A maximum value of 150 MPa is often adopted for subgrade materials, but
this varies between road agencies. Representative values of Poisson’s ratio for subgrades are
0.45 for cohesive materials and 0.35 for non-cohesive materials.

In AASHTO Guide for ME design, the required inputs are resilient modulus, Mr, Poisson’s ratio,
μ (elastic modulus for bedrock), a parameter used for quantifying stress dependent stiffness of
unbound granular materials, subgrade materials and bedrock materials under moving loads.
Resilient modulus is defined as the ratio of the repeated deviator axial stress to the recoverable
axial strain. The inputs are used to characterize layer behavior when subject to stresses. Unbound
materials display stress dependent properties.

Therefore AASHTO recommend using following equation to determine Mr:

Where ……………………………………….(2)

In AASHTO, models developed by Tseng and Lytton were originally selected to estimate the
permanent deformation of unbound granular and subgrade materials. Their relationship is:

………………………………………..(3)
 1.3 Summary of The Review
As it can be observed from what has been reviewed so far, there are significant
dissimilarities between AASHTO assumptions for mechanistic behavior of pavement
materials and Austroads assumptions. A comparison of these two codes has been presented
in Table 1.

Table 1: Comparison between Austroad and AASHTO assumptions

Pavement Layer Austroad Assumptions AASHTO Assumptions

elastic and cross- Non-Linear stress
anisotropic modelled dependent elastic
Subgrade by five parameters: modelled by two
Ev, Eh, vv, vh, f parameters:
Mr, μ
Non-Linear stress Non-Linear elastoplastic
dependent elastic depended to number of
Subbase/Base (UGM) modelled by two repetitions of traffic
parameters: loads
Er, v (N) and material
properties ( )
Viscoelastic behaviour of
asphalt depended to
Asphalt layer (Rutting) Ignored temperature and number
of loading:
E*,T, N
Elastic behaviour Elastic behaviour
Asphalt layer (Fatigue) modelled by two modelled by one
parameters :Vb ,Smix parameter :E

CHAPTER 2

METHODOLOGY
The methodology adopted was presented here.

1) Consider a CBR value and traffic in MSA and design the flexible pavement thickness using
IRC-37:2001.
 2) Then keep the base and sub-base thicknesses constant obtain the surface layer thickness
required by other methodologies.

3) Compare the surface course thickness obtained by IRC, AASHTO, AustRoads and
DMRB.This methodology was adopted for different CBR values of subgrade and Different MSA
values of traffic.

All the surface layer thickness values obtained were compared to understand the thickness
variations.

CHAPTER 3

SCOPE
1) In this work only four design codes were considered: IRC: 37-2001 for Indian roads,
AASHTO-1993 for American roads, AUSTROADS for Australia & New Zealand roads and
DMRB for U.K roads.
2) 4%, 6%, 8% and 10% CBR values of subgrade are considered.

3) 10, 20, 30, 50 and 100 msa cumulative standard axle loads are considered for the design of
pavement.

4) Base and sub base thickness are directly taken from IRC 37; only top layer thickness were
compared.

5) Surface course mix is considered to be DBM 60/70 Bitumen at 20° C.

6) Base course CBR is assumed to be 350 MPa and sub base CBR is assumed to be 175 MPa.

7) Directly design equations (SN) were taken and calculations were done from the nomographs
of AASHTO, AustRoads and DMRB. The thickness of one layer is converted into the
thickness of another layer using the equation given in IRC-37 and

……………………………………..(4)
CBR value is converted to Elastic modulus of sub-grade using

The surface layer thicknesses obtained by different methodologies for different subgrade CBR
value and Traffic in MSA combinations were calculated and presented here pictorially in the
form of graphs.

For Example CBR of 8% and traffic of 20 MSA will get the following thicknesses of surface
layer in mm by different methodologies.

CHAPTER 4

RESULTS

The other comparative graphs are presented here.

For all the following graphs traffic in MSA is presented on horizontal axis and surface layer
thickness is presented on vertical axis for different CBR values
 CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSIONS
1) The design thickness of surface layer from IRC: 37-2001 was found to be lying between that
obtained from AUSTROADS and DMRB for 6%, 8%, 10% at all CSAs considered, keeping
the base and sub-base constant.

2) At 4% CBR, IRC: 37-2001 is suggesting a higher pavement thickness compared to

 AUSTROADS & DMRB, which may be a conservative design but not economical.

3) AASHTO-1993 design thickness was 50% to 80% higher compared to IRC: 37- 2001 for a
projected traffic of more than 30 msa and for traffic less than 30 msa it is almost 100%
higher. The reason could be that AASHTO-1993 gave conservative design based on
empirical equations.

4) DMRB design thickness was the lowest among IRC, AUSTROADS, DMRB & AASHTO at
all CBR values.

REFERENCES
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pavements for different soil and traffic conditions”, Journal of the Indian Roads Congress,
July-September 2009, Paper No. 554, pp 153-162
4. Sanjeev Gill , Dr.D.K.Maharaj, “Comparative study of design charts for flexible pavement”,
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Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Washington, D.C
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