Norbert Delatte is a Professor at Cleveland State University. He is the former chairman of American Concrete Institute committee 325 on concrete pavements and a founding member of committee 327 on roller compacted pavements and committee 522 on pervious concrete and as such he is well qualified to write a comprehensive guide on concrete pavements. The book is well laid out having a logical flow to the content from a history of concrete pavements, pavement types, selection of materials, design, maintenance and finally to rehabilitation and overlays. It is hardly surprising, however, that with the author's background the book only deals with American practice.
The book comprises 18 chapters and was simultaneously published in the UK, America and Canada in 2008.
The opening chapter is a history of the development of concrete pavements from the first pavement built in 1891 up to the present day. Delatte outlines how the type of pavement and design process has evolved over the years as a result of road tests from the early tests to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) road test and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) long-term pavement performance programme. He discusses the challenges for the future and the importance of environmental and sustainability issues.
In the following chapter Delatte describes in detail the various pavement types and these are illustrated with figures and photographs. Although the chapter may be beneficial to students in providing a comprehensive overview of pavement types, joints and bay layout, etc., it contains little by way of new developments that would be of interest to a UK pavement engineer. Of interest, however, are the two sections on roller-compacted concrete and pervious/porous concrete.
Chapter 3 on performance deals with defects in concrete pavements and common defects are illustrated with photographs. The problems often encountered with cracking, joint deficiencies, surface defects and miscellaneous distress are well described and the possible causes are discussed.
In chapter 4, on subgrades, sub-bases and drainage, Delatte stresses the importance of ensuring that a subgrade provides the quality of support necessary for the design traffic loading and the parameters that are important in material selection and function of the sub-base layer. The chapter deals comprehensively with surface and sub-surface drainage; it describes sub-surface design software that has been developed by FHWA to design pavement sub-drainage and side drains and includes worked design examples.
Chapters 5 and 6 cover the selection of concrete materials and mixture design and proportioning, respectively. Delatte stresses the importance of material selection that will ensure successful paving and long-term durability of a concrete pavement. He also draws attention to the need to ensure compatibility of mix constituents and particularly in the use of admixtures which, in addition to having beneficial properties, may also have adverse effects.
The next six chapters cover the design of pavements. The first chapter covers design principles. Delatte describes the stresses that may develop in a pavement and how they may be calculated. It is helpful to have this information contained in one document when faced with the need to design a pavement to satisfy specific loading conditions. The chapter also covers joint design and spacing but offers nothing more than is already well documented in current design guides. The next chapter covers highway design with a comprehensive explanation of the AASHTO 1993 design guide and the AASHTO 1998 supplement, which are the guides used in America at the present time. Design examples are given which illustrate the design process. The chapter concludes with an introduction to the mechanistic-empirical pavement design guide (NCHRP project 1-37A), which is intended to supersede the AASHTO 1993 guide. This was a massive research project lasting over a considerable period of time and costing many millions of dollars. Delatte quotes key excerpts from the project in which it states, surprisingly, ‘that because the software is a tool for pavement analysis it does not provide structural thickness as an output’. The scale of these American research projects never fails to amaze.
The next chapter covers light-duty pavement design. This is a useful guide because it covers many situations in which it would be inappropriate to use design guides developed for heavy traffic loading. As is the norm with American guides it uses a software program, in this case ACPA StreetPave software. Delatte describes the procedure by using worked examples. There is also a section on the topical subject of pervious pavements and an interesting section on a new development using short, thin pavements. This patented system uses slabs 1·8 m2 and it is claimed that a 150 mm thick slab has the same fatigue life as a conventional 230 mm thick pavement.
Chapter 10, on airport pavement design, begins by explaining the difference in loading between highway and airfield pavements. The rest of the chapter describes aircraft pavement design using the Federal Aviation Administration's design procedures for aircraft with gross weights of 13 000 kg or more and also airport pavements for light aircraft. This chapter is unlikely to be of particular interest to pavement engineers in the UK because most, if not all, aircraft pavements are designed using the British Airports Authority design method or the Property Services Agency method, now published by Defence Estates.
The next chapter addresses the subject of industrial pavement design. This a useful addition to UK practice notes. He describes the Portland Cement Association design guide and gives guidance on the main points to be considered when designing pavements to carry heavy loads. Two design examples are given that have been modified from the Portland Cement Association guide and redesigned using RCCPave software. He also presents two case studies illustrating conventional concrete and roller-compacted concrete industrial pavement design and construction. The final chapter in the design series covers, transitions, special details and continuously reinforced concrete pavement reinforcement. The section on the treatment of transitions/joints at bridge abutments is lacking in detail. More information would have been helpful because joints at bridges are often a source of problems. This section could have been improved by the use of illustrations. The greater part of the chapter is devoted to continuously reinforced concrete pavement design. This type of pavement has never proved popular in the UK. Nonetheless, the subject is well covered with worked examples and illustrations and would provide a useful source of information.
Chapters 13, 14 and 15 cover pavement construction. Although these three chapters provide a good general overview of paving practice, they do not contain anything that would be new to a practising pavement engineer. There are a number of publications on paving practice which cover the subject in much greater depth.
Chapters 16 and 17 address the subject of maintenance and rehabilitation, respectively. Chapter 16 is very short (seven pages) and dwells more on in-service requirements. The two chapters could have been usefully merged with Chapter 16 serving as an introduction to a chapter on rehabilitation. The chapter on rehabilitation describes repair techniques and is well illustrated with photographs. Most of the techniques discussed have, however, been common practice for some time and are well documented in other publications.
The final chapter to this book covers overlays and inlays. The subject of overlays is well covered, including unbonded and bonded overlays to concrete pavements, concrete overlays to asphalt pavements and is well illustrated with drawings and photographs. The use of concrete overlays in the UK would be largely restricted to industrial and airfield applications. The subject of inlays gets little more than a passing mention in the final section of the chapter.
Overall, this book is a good introduction to the subject for students and a useful reference for pavement engineers. There is a comprehensive bibliography to allow access to more in-depth publications. However, readers who are not familiar with American design guides and American Society for Testing and Materials standards may find that cross referencing with European standards is a laborious process. It would have greatly enhanced the usefulness of this book if comparisons with European practice could have been included. The present UK highway policy of not allowing concrete as a running surface to motorways and trunk roads may limit the usefulness of this book to UK-based engineers.
