The Cement
and Concrete
Institute has been charged with promoting the use of concrete in roads
in South Africa. To achieve this the C&CI aims to create public
awareness of the benefits of concrete roads, to revise local design
methods and to provide engineers and specifying bodies with the
information necessary for them to:
- Design and construct more cost-effective
pavements
- Design pavements to meet specific
design-life requirements
- Employ similar (and therefore
comparable) design methods for both asphalt and concrete pavements
- Evaluate various pavement options on a
comparative full life-cycle cost and equivalent reliability basis.
- Consider using concrete in phased
construction of roads.
- Design for rehabilitation options such
as concrete inlays and overlays
Ongoing Initiatives
Promotional
Establishment of the Road Pavement Forum
As the
Bituminous Materials Liaison Committee and the Cementitious
Pavements Forum were both addressing issues of common interest to the
roads industry and both promoting excellence in road pavements
technology, it was decided to combine these two organisations to form
the Road Pavements Forum (RPF). Such a combination will serve the
additional purpose of providing a single forum for relevant parties in
the interests of improved productivity. The objectives of the RPF
are to serve as a forum for sharing and exchanging information and
technologies, and to discuss issues of strategic importance to the
roads construction industry. Specific goals to be achieved
include:
- Providing a perspective of overarching
strategic issues as it affects pavement engineering
- Promoting best practice
- Coordination and linkage with other
groupings
- Establishment of task groups with
specific national objectives
- Provision of sufficient time for
participation/discussion/advice and for social interaction
- Dissemination of new technologies
- Provision of a forum for acceptance of
technological changes
- Provision of a forum for interaction
between theory and practice and for indentification of technological
development needs
The RPF will
make provision for wider representation and participation
from the broader roads industry, particularly new urban and provincial
authorities, previously disadvantaged tertiary institutions and
emerging contractors. It will also allow for broader regional
representation. South Africa can play an important facilitating
role as a catalyst for technology transfer in the southern African
region, and the RPF can become a vital part in this process. It is
envisaged that future development in the communications arena will
allow regional participation at affordable rates.
Technical
cncPave:
Mechanistic design method wins SMART award The Cement and
Concrete Institute is proud to announce that the latest upgraded
version of cncPave,the mechanistic design program for concrete
pavements, recently received the SMART award commendation from the
South African Institution of Civil Engineering and the SA National
Roads Agency Ltd. The SMART Awards are aimed at creating awareness for
the benefits associated with innovative thinking and practical
solutions in civil engineering. Of the twelve entries, only two were
acknowledged with prizes - one winner and the cnc Pave's commendation.
cncPave is a mechanistically-based
pavement design program which facilitates competent decision making
when designing concrete pavements. The program takes into account a
large number of input variables, assumes that input values are
uncertain and using a unique stochastic approach, calculates the
consequences - uncertainty about the output. It also indicates
the area of pavement potentially affected by a particular mode of
failure, the cost of maintenance and rehabilitation and finally the
life cycle costing of the pavement. The performance models used
have been developed from finite element and multi-layer evaluations and
have also been calibrated to actual pavement performance in South
Africa.
"This
mechanistic computer simulation,
which utilises a unique stoistic approach, recognising the element of
uncertainty in the input values, is clearly worthy of special
recognition. The programme, with its innovative approach, power and
practicality, facilitating competent decision making when designing
concrete pavements, will go a long way to ensure good quality work in
the future and will simulate the use of concrete in future
rehabilitation works. In fact, a number of recently constructed
concrete inlays were designed using cncPave, two of which are current
Fulton Award entries.
Low-volume concrete roads handbook
The Institute
has published a handbook covering all aspects of
low-volume concrete roads. Written by Bryan Perrie, leader of
C&CI's Concrete Roads Project and an expert in the field, this 46
page, A4 booklet provides a guide for designing, specifying and
constructing concrete pavements for low-volume rural and urban
applications. It is aimed at consultants, municipal engineers and
contractors.
Concrete Road Construction
This
new C&CI
publication is intended to assist those involved in the construction of
concrete roads, whether using the most modern slip-form paver or the
most
rudimentary equipment for a low-volume township street. As most of the
distress
occurring in concrete pavements within the first ten years can
generally be
ascribed to construction related issues, this book is a must for anyone
involved in concrete roads construction.
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