ROAD

MAINTANCE
Highway Maintenance
Highway maintenance begins just after the
construction, reconstruction or rehabilitation of
the roadway facilities. As defined by AASHTO;
 Maintenance is the preservation keeping
of each type of roadway, roadside,
structures and facilities as nearly as
possible in its original condition as
constructed or as subsequently improved
the operation of highway and services to
provide satisfactory and safe
transportation.
Objectives of Highway Maintenance
1. Highway programs and activities are measured by the amount of
expenditures for construction of new facilities and reconstruction
of existing structure with the aim of keeping up with the traffic
demand.
2. Maintenance has Its own role: by giving priority to local, rural and
urban facilities particularly the paving and rehabilitation after
construction has been completed.
3. Maintenance is focused on the do betterment projects. It includes
grading and paving for short alignment changes, to correct steep
grades or sharp curves, re-surfacing and mulching, planting, flood
and erosion control.
Relationship between Design, Construction and
Maintenance
1.Poor operation of the base, insufficient slab
thickness and poor mixtures ratio will only
result to the expensive road repair. Indeed,
management absorbed the end result of design
and construction inefficiency.
2.Poor drainage design will mean erosion or
deposition of materials that requires costly
clean up operations.
3. Sharp ditches and steep slopes require costly
manual labor maintenance as compared to flat
ditches and slopes that allow equipment to work
at a lower cost.
4. Narrow road lanes usually forged large and
heavy vehicles to travel with one set of wheels
near the edge or off the pavement, giving the
maintenance personnel serious problems in the
care of pavement edges and the shoulder.
5. High maintenance cost is the result of poor design
or construction methods. This is the main problem
that causes numerous demolitions and unending
reconstruction activities being undertaken by the
highway people.
Maintenance is categorized into:
1.Road surface maintenance
2.Shoulder and approach maintenance
3.Bridge maintenance
4.Traffic services
 Road Surface Maintenance

For Gravel Roads, blading and periodic re-shaping,

or resurfacing is a routine periodic maintenance
activity.
For Surface Treatment of low type bituminous
pavement, maintenance could be patching, seal
coating, remixing, and relaxing.
 Road Surface Maintenance

For Slick Asphalt Surface, roughening, burning, or

non-skid seal is required.
For Concrete Road, maintenance could be removal
and replacement or filling of damaged areas.
Sometimes joint sealing or mud-jacking or under-
sealing is relatively common maintenance work.
Maintenance of Shoulder and Approach

Maintenance of the shoulder and approaches of the

highway is governed by the surface characteristic in the
area.
Sod shoulders should be removed and periodically bladed
down to be the roadway elevation to avoid entrapment of
water in the traveled way.
Grass prevents shoulder erosion. If necessary, fertilized, re-
seeded, or treated to keep them in good conditions.
Maintenance of Shoulder and Approach

Gravel and earth shoulder should be maintained

by blading under favorable weather conditions.
Rutting or setting of the shoulder should be
corrected at once by reconstruction or re-
surfacing.
Maintenance of Roadside
The type and kind of roadside maintenance depends upon the
following conditions:
If the roadside is full of grass, mowing closer to the shoulder
is the answer. If the necessary, grass at the roadside be
fertilized or treated with lime. In some areas, reseeding may
be required.
If the roadside has dry grass considered as fire hazard,
burning or plowing is the solution.
If brushes cover the back-slope, trimming is necessary to
maintain clearance and sight distance.
The Ingenious Machine used for Roadside Maintenance
a.Mechanical sod cutter
b.Combined seed and fertilizer spreader
c.Power mowers.
d.Portable grass cutter
e.Bush mower
f. Bush chopper
Drainage Maintenance
1.Cleaning of ditches, culvert, drop inlets and catch
basins to accommodate free flow of water.
2.Removal of sediments, branches and other
debris gather at trash racks, culvert and structure
entrances.
3.Repair of eroded channels and dikes.
4.Riprap and bank protection to prevent
recurrence.
Bridge Maintenance
1.For steel bridge structure, the routine maintenance
calls for cleaning by sandblasting, flame, or other
means of repainting.
2.Cleaning and re-sealing of deck joints that are
extruded or filled with dirt.
3.Repair of drainage handrails.
4.Re-surfacing of rough or slicky deck surface.
5.Correct serious scour around the pier and abutments.
6.Most bridges maintenance is considered specialized
work. Traveling crews exclusively for bridges work
alone is a function of the maintenance operations.
7.Concrete bridge decks normally deteriorate due to
deicing salts. The problem starts when the salts
penetrates and corrodes the reinforcing steel that
spall-off the overlaying concrete.
8.Correction is to remove the concrete, clean the steel
and apply new material such a polymer concrete.
9.Sometimes seal-out or overlay of asphalt materials are
10. Check the bridge deck deterioration by:
a.Apply waterproof membranes.
b.Applying latex modified concrete.
c.Impregnating the deck with polymers.
d.Passing electric current through reinforcing steel.
11. If decks are dismantled, an epoxy coated
reinforcing may be used
Traffic service
Maintenance operations of highway includes the
traffic services like:
1.Stripping is a continuing functions
2.Repair of road signs.
3.Maintenance of street and highway light and signals.
(sometimes the functions of the local government)
4.Coming up with the emergencies. Personnel on patrol
to keep the road open, and rescue stranded vehicles
Maintenance Management
Studies showed the need for improvement on the following
field.
Education in management technique for maintenance
engineers and foreman including its field personnel.
More detailed and careful planning and scheduling of work
and establishing standards for the level of maintenance.
Major improvement of maintenance tools and equipment
 Providing a better and efficient communications
Establishing lines of authority and responsibilities
For the maintenance organization to succeed, staffing
with permanent trained and dedicated personnel is the
solution.
Effective manage system requires efficient, accurate
and fair budgeting and reporting procedures. But how
to implement these, is the next to impossible, because
it is difficult to overcome varied administration, and
behavioral problems.
 One example is the studies made on roadside mowing
which knows that:
1.The use of better equipment could accomplish mowing
from 3 to 6 times as much area to the use of poor and
antiquated tools.
2.Two mowers working side by side accomplish less than
when they work separately. Conversation time eats most of
the working time.
3.Not less than one and one half of two hours a day is spent
unproductively for the preparatory operation and travel of
the mower to the job site.
Requirements for Maintenance Management
1.To stabilize the standard level of maintenance by setting
performance standards for worker crew and
maintenance units. This requires Method Time
Measurement (MTM) expected output for particular
operations that are predetermined.
2.To develop an accurate monitoring and fair reporting
system and to compare actual work with the expected
production.
3.To develop a management system that will give efficient
work scheduling assignment.
4.To develop effective procedures, methods and
machinery or organization to carry out individual
maintenance operations.
The roadway to be the development
in maintenance is still far. While
others have already gone far
advanced, we are just about to
begin.
 Road Maintenance
Effective maintenance personnel activities are measured
under the following criteria.
1.Personnel who are devoted to the maintenance work
are not those who just kill the time and collect their
salaries.
2.Personnel responsibility for keeping the roadway open
to traffic moving under all conditions.
3. Personnel rescue operation in assisting stranded
motorists during the bad weather, heavy rain, removal of
fallen trees, flood, erosion etc.
4. Maintenance personnel are exposed to accidents,
hazards during their maintenance or rehabilitation.
Maintenance personnel deserves to be recognized and
rewarded accordingly, unfortunately, these dedicated
people are sometimes victims of neglect especially in the
promotion and increase of salaries.
On some instances, Highway agency is legally held
responsible for injury to person or damages to property
resulted from poor highway maintenance. Unfortunately,
employees and supervisors are even charged in court,
condemned and crucified by the media people prior the
hearing of the case.
Rehabilitation
Pavement rehabilitation is an activity primarily to provide
good riding and skid resistance or to improve the
structural effectiveness of the pavement.
The FHWA define rehabilitation as:
Resurfacing, restoration and rehabilitation work,
restoring to the original safe usable condition
without addition to the original capacity.
According to AASHTO, the primary objectives of pavement
rehabilitations are:
1.To improve the smoothness of the road surface.
2.To extend the pavement life.
3.To improve the skid resistance of the road.
4.To construct the sections with poor foundations.
5.To improve the drainage facilities.
The efficiency of the highway system could be
rated by:
1.Sufficiency ratings
2.Accident data.
3.Skid tests.
4.Maintenance report.
5.Public comments and suggestions.
Resurfacing
Resurfacing is the addition of pavement layer
over the existing roadway or bridge deck surface to
provide additional capacity. The additional re-
surface pavement should not be less than 20mm in
thickness.
Restoration and Rehabilitation
Restoration and rehabilitation work includes:
1.Replacement of defective joints.
2.Repair of spalled joints.
3.Substantial pavement work.
4.Reworking or strengthening of sub-base.
5.Recycling existing materials to improve their structural integrity.
6.Adding under drains.
7.Improving shoulders.
8.Removing and replacing deteriorated materials.
 Pavement Maintenance refers to actions that are
corrective or preventive.
Reconstruction refers to the removal of existing
pavement and replacing them with a new pavement
and under course.
Overlays could be either Portland cement or
Asphalt concrete laid on a existing pavement.
Recycling means the repeated use of existing
materials working on asphalt materials, Portland
cement or lime.
The Recycling Procedure could be as follows:
1. Surface recycling consists of reworking about the top
surface of asphalt pavement. It is applied for the
treatment of raveling, wheel truck rutting, flushing and
corrugations. The work includes the use of heater-planter,
heater-scarifier, cold planers and cold milling. The
disadvantages of their use are the presence of noise, heat
and air pollution.
2.In place surface and base recycling. This procedure
involves pulverizing all existing pavement, followed by
reshaping and compacting. Before relaying, the
materials are upgraded with lime, Portland cement
concrete pavement. One advantage of this method is
the ability to increase thee load carrying capacity of the
pavement without major changes in the grade.
3.Central plant recycling is the removal of materials from
the roadway, crushing them, mixing in the plant then
laid and compacted with conventional equipment.
Both asphalt and Portland cement concrete are
reprocessed to make aggregate materials for stabilization
of the base course. The recycled materials when used as
base course is blended with additives without heat such
as Portland cement, lime or cutback or emulsified asphalt.
For surfacing, it is heated and then blended with new
asphalt cement or recycling agents and sometimes with
new aggregates.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Recycling Categories
A. Surface Recycling
Advantages:
1.It reduces reflection cracking.
2.Promotes bond between the old pavement and the thin overlay.
3.Provides transition between the new overlay and the existing, gutter,
bridge, pavement, etc., that is resistant raveling (eliminates feathering)
4.Reduces localized roughness.
5.Treats variety of type of pavement distress such as raveling, flushing,
corrugations, rutting, oxidizing pavement faulting at a reasonable cost.
6.Improved skid resistance.
7.Minimum disruption to traffic.
Disadvantage
1.Limited structural improvement.
2.The heater-scarifyer and heater planning has limited
effectiveness on rough pavement without multiple passes
of equipment.
3.Limited repair of severely flushed or unstable pavements.
4.Some air quality problems.
5.Vegetation closer to roadway may be damaged.
6.Mixture with maximum size aggregate greater than 1 inch
cannot be treated with some equipment.
B. In-Place Recycling
Advantages:

1.Significant structural improvements.

2.Treats all types and degrees of pavement distress.
3.Reflection cracking can be eliminated.
4.Frost susceptibility may be improved.
5.Improved riding quality.
 Disadvantage
1.Quality control not as good as from the central plant.
2.Traffic disruption.
3.Pulverizing equipment repair requirement.
4.Higher in cost.
C. Central plant recycling
Advantages:
1.Significant structural improvement.
2.Good quality control
3.Treat all types and degree of pavement distress.
4.Reflection cracking can be eliminated.
5.Improve skid resistance.
6.Geometrics cane be more easily altered.
7.Better control if additional binder or aggregate is used.
8.Improved riding quality.
 Disadvantage
1.Increased traffic disruption.
2.May have air quality problems at plant site.
Maintenance and rehabilitation programs are
based on different types of collected data that
includes:
1.Surface roughness
2.Surface distress
3.Surface deflection
4.Surface friction or skid resistance
EVALUATION AND MAINTENANCE OF
CONCRETE PAVEMENT
Considering the increasing length of roadways, the
management on the basis of field observations alone is
becoming method of evaluation, was introduced:
1.Those projects that need immediate maintenance or
rehabilitations are listed on the priority projects.
2.The type and kind of maintenance or rehabilitation required
is specified.
3. What strategy of maintenance or rehabilitation would
be adopted now and in the future to minimize life cycle
costs or maximized the net benefits.
Maintenance of Concrete Pavement

Maintenance of good concrete road could be argued as

follows:
1. Sealing cracks of transverse and longitudinal
construction and expansion joints is one recommendation
when maintenance Engineers could not agree on one
question whether sealing the narrow cracks is effective or
not. The practice however, is to clean properly wide cracks
or spalled joints then applied with sealing materials to
prevent the intrusion of extraneous material, and to
block the downward penetration of surface water.
2. For small and scattered broken surface on good
concrete pavement, patching with concrete is
economical. On affected portion old concrete is
removed by vertical straight line cut parallel and
perpendicular to the roadway centerline
3. Sections that are removed should have minimum area
of 20 sq. meters. If the sub-grade appears to be weak,
and doubtful to carry heavy axial load, replace it with
suitable materials and compact properly. The new
concrete slab should be as thick as the original
pavement.
4. Good practice demand that extra thickness adjoining
the old concrete be provided extending the patch
under the old pavement to width and depth of 10
centimeters.
5. Additional cement is necessary to produce high early
strength concrete or an accelerator such as calcium
chloride is used for patching if early use of the
pavement is desired. The ideal time to make repair of
concrete pavement road in the evening.
6. Pavement surface with spall from freezing and
thawing or salt action are levelled with asphalt
mixture or surface treatment. Another method is to
patch with concrete bounded to old concrete with a
cement- water or epoxy.
7. Spalled joint can be repaired with cement grout
containing epoxy mixed with catalyst.

MUD JACKING
- is a maintenance method adopted to restore the
sub-grade support under pumping pavement and to level
uneven slab.