THE STUDY OF PAVEMENT OVERLAY DESIGN

The main purpose of this study is to recommend a procedure for flexible overlay design over rigid pavements. The current overlay design procedures are based mostly on experience acquired in the field of pavement design. They are oriented toward reducing the pavement deflection and keeping it below a certain limiting value believed to critical; no detailed analysis of the pavement before and after rehabilitation is usually used. In the few methods where some structural analysis suggested, no tools are offered to help achieving the proposed analysis. The investigation is aimed toward a workable rational overlay design procedure, whereby the effect of load, climatic factors, pavement conditions such as joints and pavement history are incorporated. The design procedure is offered along with a computer program, discussions and some nomographs to help the designer analyze the rigid pavement structure before and after overlaying it. The sources of the information and the analysis presented in this paper vary from existing methods of analysis found in the literature, to analysis done by the author to help build the recommended design procedure. (Portions of this document are not fully legible)