Determining the timing of preservation or rehabilitation activities over the service life of a pavement is critical to ensuring a pavement meets or exceeds its expected performance according to its design. With transportation agencies facing rising traffic volumes and reduced budgets, it is therefore also critical to ensure the scheduling of routine and major maintenance activities throughout the life of the pavement to maintain an acceptable serviceability index at the lowest cost to the stakeholders.
Rehabilitation activities for concrete pavements include: resealing of joints, replacing/restoring malfunctioning joints (i.e. dowel bar retro-fits or cross-stitching), grinding of pavements to restore smoothness, partial or full-depth repairs, removing deteriorated materials, strengthening of bases or subbases, filling of voids under the concrete with slab jacking techniques, concrete overlay installations over existing concrete or asphalt structures, and adding drains.
Below are several key resources and documents on rehabilitation and maintenance of concrete pavement:
Useful websites and resources
- CP Tech Center Preservation and Maintenance Landing Site
- MTO Pavement Design and Rehabilitation Manual
- MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub: Pavement Network Asset Management
- Proper joint sealing techniques for pavement preservation (FHWA-NHI-134207E)
- Concrete Network Slab Jacking – How to lift a concrete slab
- Ontario Good Roads Association Manual – Best Management Practices for Municipal Concrete Infrastructure
- How to construct durable full-depth repairs in concrete pavements (FHWA-NHI-134207A)
- Proper construction techniques for dowel bar retrofit (DBR) and cross-stitching (FHWA-NHI-134207D)
- FHWA / TXDOT Guidelines for Routine Maintenance of Concrete Pavement