Experimental Study on Ultra-Thin White Topping Use in Village Road

Abstract

Road traffic is increasing steadily over the years. This is an international phenomenon.An international forecast predicts that such increase will continue in near future. Even in case of developed countries, there is a shortage of funds required for new infrastructure projects, both for constructing them and more significantly towards their maintenance and repairs. The position in the context of a developing country like India is obviously far worse.As a result, more and more roads are deteriorating.The proper strengthening and maintenance of roads is urgently required to ensure balanced regional development and alleviation of poverty as they connect the villages and other small town centres harbouring backwardness. A majority of these roads do not have traffic worthy pavement. The cost of strengthening and repair by Conventional method of this large network will need huge resources both physical and financial which are quite scarce.
Most of the existing flexible pavements in the network broadly have thin bituminous layers. These bituminous pavements, in general, have a problem that they get deteriorated with time. Most of our roads exhibit, in general, the following deficiencies:

• Rutting
• Fatigue cracking
• Shoving
• Ravelling
• Pot holes

History
White topping- a relatively thin concrete overlay placed a top distressed asphalt created a need not only for the construction of new highways but also for the maintenance and rehabilitation of existing highway networks. Pavements are prone to damage due to the repeated wheel loads as well as temperature and other environmental effects. Instead of rehabilitation of Bitumen/Asphalt road by filling bitumen for better durability they must be rehabilitated by UTWT. UTWT is a technique which involves placement of a thinner (than normal) thickness ranging from 55 to 100 mm thickness with closely spaced joints and bonded to an existing bitumen/asphalt pavement. The application of UTWT has been targeted to rehabilitate deteriorated bitumen/asphalt pavements with fatigue and or rutting distress.
However this technique is giving good results in the city areas but not frequently used in rural areas where the deterioration of the road takes place in every Monsoon, which result in heavy maintenance cost and discomfort for the passenger travelling through such roads.