Pavement Design and Comparison using Indian Road Congress and Portland Cement Association method

The study aims to find most appropriate method for the design of cement concrete road for Indian standards. The design of rigid pavement is so far based on various analytical, mechanistic as well as mechanistic empirical methods and most optimum design method is so far to be known. A critical comparison between the two methods of pavement design viz. Portland cement association method and the existing Indian Road Congress method for the design of rigid pavement. The primary objective is to load repetitions on the pavement to prevent the crack initiation due to critical stress conditions and the prevailing sub base and sub grade conditions. An axle load survey is been conducted for three days to predict the existing traffic for the design road. Survey predicted a total count of 660 commercial vehicles per day with a growth factor of 75%. The pavement is designed with a tied concrete shoulder. The pavement thickness is designed for the critical edge stresses and checked for bottom up cracking and top up cracking along with temperature stresses using the IRC guidelines. The design is revised using the PCA method for fatigue and erosion damage. The most optimum design thickness is found using the methods. The resulting outcomes of the two methods are analyzed critically and the comparison of the two methodology is done by comparing the prevailing conditions adopted in the guidelines.