Semi-rigid Asphalt Pavement's Premature Failures on Chinese Motorway Network

Abstract

Over the past 20 years more than 30,000 km motorways have been built in China. On the motorway network, semi-rigid asphalt pavement is widely used, which is composed of 15cm or so asphalt concrete layer and cement or lime-flyash bounded aggregate base layer. It has been observed that many premature failures occur 2-3 years after the motorways' open to traffic. Moreover, most of the motorway asphalt pavements' actual service life is about 7-8 years, comparing with their design life of 15 years. In the paper, asphalt pavement design method of China is given first. Then, the premature failure types as rutting and transversal cracking are presented. The impact of these failures on the pavement is discussed as well. It reveals that currently prevailing semi-rigid asphalt pavement technique in China need to be further improved.