Design of Long-Life Pavements for India

Perpetual or long-life pavements have been proven to be a sustainable pavement solution to meet heavy traffic demand and to address the material scarcity. These are normally designed as full depth asphalt pavements to last more than 50 years without requiring any structural rehabilitation, but need periodic maintenance to address damages which are confined to top few inches of a pavement. However, requirement of huge quantity of bituminous materials makes full depth asphalt pavements very expensive for use in developing countries like India. Studies in countries like UK and China have shown that long-lasting composite pavements with cemented materials and deep strength pavements with thin granular layer sandwiched between asphalt layer and subgrade can also be considered as perpetual pavements. In India, the concept of perpetual pavement is relatively new and introduced only in 2012. Also, the computer program IITPAVE available with these guidelines does not address the design of perpetual pavements in a comprehensive manner. Therefore, a computer program called “PerPave” has been developed under this study to design and compare different perpetual pavement types and to suggest the optimum perpetual pavement composition with minimum cost. It will be helpful for the design engineers in selecting the appropriate perpetual pavement section considering the budget, traffic, and availability of the materials in the locality.