Effect of Traffic and Soil characteristics on Flexible and Rigid Pavement Life Cycle Costs

Abstract

It is typically very difficult for the designer to select a suitable type of pavement while constructing a new road in Egypt because there are various types available, including flexible, rigid, and mixed pavement. Two models of structure design: one for flexible pavement and the other for rigid pavement are presented in this paper. This study aims to determine the suitable pavement type based on soil and traffic parameters; therefore, as expected, the authors performed nearly 1050 runs using various traffic and soil parameters. Design software is provided with a traffic and soil value for each run to determine the appropriate thickness of both flexible and rigid pavement. Accordingly, for each run, an estimate of the life cycle cost (LCC) was calculated for both rigid and flexible pavement. The LCC contains both construction and maintenance costs. Then the chart is designed to show the LCC for both types of pavement. It can be used to calculate the best pavement type based on soil type and traffic volume. It can be concluded that when CBR < 9% and ESAL > 110 (msa), the rigid pavement is preferred, and, the flexible pavement is preferred in the cases of CBR ≥ 10% and ESAL ≤ 50 (msa), and in cases where ESAL falls within the range of 50 to 110, the CBR value surpasses 10%.