Field and laboratory study of flexible pavement rutting in Egypt

Solving rutting problems have been gained earlier attentionbecause it can be considered as the most common performance problemof flexible pavements. The trend now is to limit rutting during the designand construction phases of the pavement. Rational design methods arebelieved to be the solution of pavement rutting problem. The basic part ofthese methods is to predict rutting through mechanistic performancemodels. The main objective of this study is to develop a mechanisticperformance model for rutting prediction of asphalt concrete mixes. Toachieve this objective, the study conducts both field and laboratoryprograms to measure rutting of wearing course at twenty six field testsites and to compute its rutting with the aid of creep test resultsperformed on its field samples. Then correlate the two rutting values ateach site. The study results also were used to analyze influence factors onthe overall field rutting as well as the effect of wearing course mixparameters on its field rutting. The analysis of the results indicates a goodcorrelation between static creep test results and field measurements. Acall is made for using a simple static creep test for fundamentalevaluation of asphalt concrete mixture to develop a rational designmethods of pavements in Egypt.