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Concrete Solutions

Despite budget woes, TxDOT continues to research affordable paving systems

Budget woes have put serious cracks in TxDOT’s capital plans this year, making the challenge of maintaining the state’s concrete pavement all the more daunting. Despite cutbacks, one area of the department’s budget that hasn’t taken a hit is research. With its $20 million annual budget intact, TxDOT’s Research and Technology Implementation Office is dedicating much of its resources to finding affordable solutions for keeping pavement condition scores up.

“In today’s times, it’s more critical that we’re doing research that will result in savings,” says Rick Collins, director of the Research and Technology Implementation Office. “We need affordable solutions not just for now, but research that thinks ahead and will help us down the road.”

Testing more effective and affordable methods for repairing pavement has been a significant focus at RTI in recent years, Collins says. Building on recent findings, RTI is planning several tests of new concrete overlay methods. A 2007 RTI study showed that rehabilitation of under-designed pavements with thin concrete overlays provided years of good performance. One test looked at 4-in. bonded concrete overlays on sections of IH-610 in Houston that were built in 1986. After a decade of use, tests showed that the condition of the concrete pavement under the bonded concrete overlay (or BCO) was satisfactory.

Continuing from that study, crews are scheduled this month to test a new method for dealing with the state’s distressed jointed concrete pavements. The research project, which is being conducted for TxDOT under the supervision of by Texas Tech University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering program in Lubbock, aims to place continuously reinforced bonded concrete overlay over a .5-mile stretch of jointed concrete pavement (or JCP) on IH-75 in Grayson County.

Mykol Woodruff, director of operations for TxDOT’s Paris District, says that many of the existing slabs along the section of road are flexing and fracturing, costing $300,000 to $400,000 annually to maintain. Woodruff says he is hopeful that the overlays will improve load transfer and help solve waterproofing issues that have promoted deterioration.

Won Moon, an associate professor at Texas Tech who is supervising the project, says the goal of the project is to find a solution that will last 10 to 20 years.

“This type of project fits well with the direction of TxDOT and its maintenance program,” Moon says. “Hopefully this system will solve similar problems on many projects.”

The Paris District, which has the second lowest pavement condition scores in the state, is also looking at thin BCO applications for problem intersections. Woodruff says the district has two intersections with flexible pavement that have consistent shoving problems. Current plans call for thin BCO whitetopping of these intersections.

Given the current budget crunch, Woodruff is hopeful these projects can provide relief.

“For now, we just have to live with the fact that we have distresses on our pavements until times are good again,” he says. “In the meantime, bonded concrete overlay appears to be a favorable solution.”

Efforts to use concrete as a fix for many of the state’s maintenance issues is encouraging in light of the current economic climate, says Gerald Lankes, executive director of the Texas Concrete Pavement Association. In recent years, TxDOT has started to include rigid versus ?exible pavement structure alternatives in plans for projects, which has raised fears among concrete suppliers that less expensive asphalt could gain broader acceptance. However, TxDOT is also moving toward lifecycle cost analysis, which Lankes says could boost concrete use.

“In the past, we saw a lot of projects go all asphalt that previously might have been concrete,” he says. “Now we think there will be more opportunities for concrete.”

 

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