ASPHALT PAVEMENT DESIGN ALTERNATIVES FOR ROADS WITH LOW AND MEDIUM TRAFFIC VOLUMES IN CLAYEY SOILS IN THE CITY OF SINCELEJO

Abstract

The design of pavements is a work of civil engineers, who seeks provide structures that are resistant to traffic loads and the effects adverse effects of the environment, so that they can be built properly and manage to provide their users with a comfortable and safe experience, at the least possible cost. To achieve this objective, it is necessary to choose a design methodology according to the characteristics of the project and determine as precisely as possible, each of the variables involved in the design, taking into consideration that many of the design methodologies are empirical in nature, which in some way puts try the designer experience. It is for this reason that designs require multiple studies, which are usually costly in financial resources and time. All of the above, many institutions have taken on the task of developing design primers that allow obtain pavement structures based on the input of few parameters and obtain applicable solutions for most projects; however, they must be taken into account the limitations of these primers and their application environment, given the case, that many of them must be calibrated, to certain particular conditions of the project area, with the aim of objective of optimizing resources and guaranteeing lasting works. The objective of this work is to make an asphalt pavement design primer based on the methodology of AASTHO 1993 design, which allows finding a suitable design alternative for projects located in the city of Sincelejo, north of Colombia. For this purpose, it carried out studies of soils in clayey subgrades, which predominate in the town of study and that they classify as CL to obtain their bearing capacity values (CBR). Additionally, various levels of traffic were selected, which can occur and are defined the typical pavement structures. For method design parameters, the typical values expected in the study area were used, which resulted in, a design primer that is made up of twenty transit levels and four pavement structure alternatives, for each case, that satisfy these requests.