Functional Properties of Concrete Roads - Development of an Optimisation Model and Studies on Road Lighting Design and Joint Performance

Sammanfattning: The roads constitute a major part of the nation?sinfrastructure. For the society and the individuals it isimportant with a well functioning road network. To sustain theimpact from traffic intensity and heavy loads durable pavementsare demanded. Concrete pavements for roads with high trafficintensity and heavy loads are common in the USA and in severalEuropean countries. In Sweden, less than 1 % of the roadnetwork consists of concrete roads.The research about concrete road pavements has been focusingon development of design methods and studies of surfaceproperties like friction, longitudinal evenness, wearresistance and noise. To increase the knowledge and use ofconcrete roads there is a need to optimise the differentfunctional properties with regard to each other and to socialfactors.The objective of this doctoral thesis is to survey, analyseand quantify relationships between functional properties ofconcrete roads and social factors such as environmental impact,traffic and user safety, riding comfort and economicconsiderations (costs). The goal is to develop a model that canbe used as an instrument for optimising the concrete roaddesign.This thesis describes a thorough literature investigation,special studies on road lighting design of concrete pavements,laboratory investigations about saw-cutting times for jointsand bonding properties of dowels and development of anoptimisation model. The literature investigation has resultedin compiled knowledge on functional properties of concreteroads and their relationships with social factors. A compiledanalysis has also been performed from follow-ups of the fourconcrete roads constructed in Sweden in the 1990s. From thespecial study on road lighting design, proposals are made forusing new values for brightness and specularity and changingthe classification of wet concrete pavements. Theinvestigations of joint performance have given recommendationsfor the earliest saw-cutting time for joints in concrete roads.An optimisation model is proposed, and presently parts of themodel can be used for economic comparisons between differentalternatives.The proposed model needs further research regardingvaluation of the relationships before the model can be used asa total model. Other areas interesting for further researchare: road lighting design and especially wet pavements, upperbound of sawcutting time for joints and further analysis ofdowel performance.