Technical and Economical Comparison between Composite Pavement and the Current Flexible Pavement

Every year lots of money is spent for constructing and maintaining roads. These costs are significantly related to the type of the pavement and its fundamental materials. Iranians usually use the flexible pavement which contains the asphaltic overlay and the granular base and sub grade, while we can pay more attention to the rigid and the composite pavement for using in our highways, as well. In this research study, a flexible pavement and a composite one had been designed for the Qazvin - Zanjan freeway according to AASHTO method. Their initial costs and the whole life costs had been compared, as well. It has been shown that the cost of construction of composite pavement is more than the flexible one but because of the cost-effective maintenance, its whole life cost is less than the whole life cost of traditional flexible pavements. Besides, the composite pavement has some technical advantages including its high fatigue resistance, low deformation and high friction, though; composite systems are potentially more prone to other distresses, such as reflective cracking and rutting within the HMA layer. Premium HMA surfaces and/or reflective cracking mitigation techniques may be required to mitigate these potential problems.