Research and experience gained over the current decade in the field of concrete pavement technology has bequeathed to the next century many benefits and at the same time posed some questions. The longevity and durability of concrete pavements have been amply confirmed by many performance studies. The benefits of concrete are best exploited on heavily trafficked roads currently experienced in many countries. As well as providing long life pavements requiring minimal maintenance, policy requirements in many countries now require social, environmental and economic aspects to be taken fully into account in road management. Although, developments in concrete pavement technology have provided solutions to meet these new requirements, unlike for other pavement materials, this does not appear to be widely known. Consequently, after the 1995 World Road Congress in Montreal, the PIARC C7 Committee on Concrete Roads devoted its attention to addressing these topics and decided to offer an opportunity to discuss about them at its session at the Kuala Lumpur Congress. Four main topics were chosen for discussion: the evaluation and maintenance of concrete pavement, which extends the KL1 session on the technical and economic aspects of pavement and examines the means for providing a wider consideration of the concrete solution; the composite pavements concept and applications, in which the "hidden" role of the concrete is emphasised for all categories of rural and urban roads; the concrete pavement surface characteristics (rolling noise and skid resistance), to point out and render obsolete the conviction that concrete pavements are noisy and unsafe; the technology of thin and ultra-thin concrete overlays of flexible pavements, the proposal for suggesting that concrete pavements can be considered as rut resistant, low noise and provide adequate skid resistance. Of course, the subjects dealt with present many points still open to further consideration. For the coverign abstract see ITRD E118727.
Abstract