PURPOSES : The logistic roads for freight transport along to the new port of Busan have been suffered by the rapid weather changes including high temperature and torrential rain. As a result, the roads require annual repair, which have been distressed seriously by the heavy logistic and environmental loads. Therefore, we need to identify the cause of the road pavement distresses and find a proper design method to minimize the pavement distress in order to prohibit the problem aggravated.
METHODS : The damaged conditions of the logistic roads were investigated on-site. In addition, applied pavement designs, real traffic volumes, and historical climatic information were intensively collected for this project. With the investigated and collected data Korean pavement design program (KPRP) was implemented to analyzed the causes of the damaged roads and conceive the pavement design draft optimized for the roads.
RESULTS : According to the investigation and KPRP analysis, the traffic volume to transport freights impacts significantly the pavement distress, so that a higher PG grade binder type should be used, for which polymer modified asphalt (PMA) binders are recommended. Moreover, its pavement thickness should be increased to secure load bearing capacity, but thickening the pavement has been discouraged due to difficulties induced by the road-sectional change, especially road-height change.
CONCLUSIONS : In conclusion, 5cm PMA overlay is suggested for the normal-scale maintenance, and 7cm PMA overlay for large-scale maintenance. Besides these, the application of Polymer-modified Stone Matrix Asphalt (PSMA) using PG76-22 binder would be the best preventive maintenance method, which has been well know as having higher fatigue resistant performance than general PMA. However, if we use PSMA, quality control should be very cautious since PSMA can be very susceptible premature distress if its production and construction are improperly proceeded.