LIFE CYCLE COST ANALYSIS FOR SELECTING PAVEMENT MAINTENANCE ALTERNATIVES, A CASE STUDY OF KOTA - BARAN ROAD (NH-27)

Abstract

Most of our roads are bituminous pavements. Bituminous pavements are showing early sign of distresses
worldwide due to increasing loads, intensity of traffic, high tyre pressure, etc. The rutting, cracking, ageing, etc. are
quite common. Performance of bituminous pavements in hot climatic regions is thus becoming somewhat doubtful.
Concrete on the other hand is known to be a relatively stiffer material and is relatively less sensitive to high
temperature. Accordingly, concrete pavements can be adopted as an alternative to traditional bituminous pavements.
Therefore, cost-effectiveness of PCC overlays (whitetopping) over bituminous overlay needs to be examined. Use of
concrete overlay as a rehabilitation measure for strengthening of deteriorated bituminous pavements is increasing.
This is one of the rehabilitation method which results in lower maintenance cost. This method of maintenance and
rehabilitation of deteriorated bituminous pavements can be adopted after Life Cycle Cost Analysis. By adopting
whitetopping, a large network of roads can be rehabilitated at reasonable costs and these rehabilitated roads will have
an improved lifespan than conventional flexible pavements. Whitetopped roads on an average have proved to be quite
cost-effective besides giving an additional life of 20 to 30 years on average. In the present study, an attempt is made to
evaluate the structural and functional condition of the existing flexible pavement at Kota Baran Road (NH-27) s and
provide a cost effective rehabilitation solution. The field work consists of road inventory, traffic studies, Bump
Integrator, Visual pavement condition survey and BBD studies. The summary of overall condition assessment on
functional and structural evaluation resulted overlay. In the present work, an attempt is made to design concrete
overlay section as a rehabilitation alternative for the in-service flexible pavements and compared to conventional
flexible overlays with Life Cycle Cost Analysis. Sensitivity analysis for risk and uncertainty analysis is done for
different discount rate and inflation rate.