Concrete Pavements with optimized geometry (TCP) have been one of the main innovations applied by the Ministry of Public Works in Chile (MOP). Due the problem in terms of performance and higher costs to maintain, building roads with concrete is now a more widely initial alternative to projects that were traditionally dominated by asphalt solutions. TCP® pavements, are now commonly accepted and being implemented by the ministry and private companies in all type of projects: Roads, Streets, Industrial Yards, and Parking Lots. Ranging from high flow of heavy trucks, to low volume roads, with almost any traffic.
Route 60 CH, La Polvora Road:
In projects with high truck traffic, concrete pavements perform much better than asphalt—this has been demonstrated in several sections in important routes, like Route 68 and 78 in Chile. However, in the last 20 years almost all sections have been built in asphalt, due mainly to lower initial cost. An important amount of money and resources have has spent in rehabilitations in a short time since their construction. An example of this is “La Pólvora” road: It was constructed in asphalt, and opened to traffic in 2008, and is currently highly damaged in many subsections. This road is where all the cargo enters and leaves one of the main ports of Chile. Now it´s being rehabilitated, with a TCP unbonded concrete overlay, placed directly over the existing milled asphalt. The road is 15 km long with two lanes in each direction, 7 meters width, plus 20 cm of lane widening. The structure is 23-cm thick concrete slabs, reinforced with plastic fiber.
U-TCP: X-730 Road, Access to Bahía Murta:
New technologies and developments allows building a concrete solution for low-volume roads. Ultra-Thin Concrete Pavements (U-TCP) are being constructed. These pavements are fiber-reinforced and are placed directly over the existing granular road. The idea of this system is to take advantage of the level of compaction and consolidation of the existing soil to use it as a base for the pavement. This technology allows to build concrete pavements with very low initial cost—competing directly with asphalt surface treatment solutions—but with all the advantages that the concrete has in terms of low-to-no maintenance over time. Two contracts (G-84 and S-640) are in operation and two projects are being built. One of them, is the access to “Bahía Murta”, which has an extension of 4.4 km using 10 cm of fiber-reinforced concrete. The second project, located in the 8th region—150 km south of Concepción, the overlay was placed over a granular road with up to a 24° slope, with 8 cm of fiber-reinforced concrete.
— Components of this article courtesy of Juan Pablo Covarrubias V, Gerente General-Comercial TCPavements
