Highway Engineering

Introduction:
Road patterns are very important to the growth of a city’s neighborhoods. On the other hand, recent city growth has yet to pay much attention to studying road patterns. It has led to many roads that don’t connect, as well as housing and business developments built far away from roads far from the center of town.

As the distance between where people live and where most of the businesses are in a city grows, more and more people need cars to do their daily travel chores. The way the roads are set up also makes it take longer for emergency vehicles to get to a certain place. There are different kinds of road patterns used on highways. A road pattern is when a road is built in a rectangular pattern, radial Pattern, hexagonal Pattern, etc., to help manage traffic.

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Introduction:
WBM is an abbreviation for Water Bound Macadam Road, the most commonly used road construction method for over 100 years. The Water Bound Macadam road is named after Scottish engineer John Loudoun Macadam, who invented and built the WBM road. Water-bound macadam roads have a wearing surface consisting of clean and crushed aggregates that are mechanically interlocked by the rolling Process and bound with each other by the filler material (screening) and water that is laid on the subgrade or base course.

Fig1: WBM Road
Courtesy: vincivilworld.com
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Introduction:
Highways often have elevated asphalt medians, where the edge of the surface is higher than the middle. In a diagonal direction, this slope is called the camber. The camber of the road surface is made so that rainwater flows away from the edges. The camber of a road surface is the slope in the transverse direction that helps drain rainwater. It’s also called a road’s cross-slope.

What is Camber in Road?
Camber is a slope on the road surface in the transverse direction that allows rainwater to drain off the surface and keeps cars from sliding and causing damage to the pavement. Again, camber is one of the most important parts of a road’s pavement. It has a lot of benefits that make the road surface last longer.
Generally, a camber is a crown-shaped part of the road surface that is made by raising the middle of the road compared to its edges. Most of the time, the rate of camber or cross slope of a road is written as “1 in n,” which means that the transverse slope is in the ratio of 1 vertical to n horizontal, or it can be written as a percentage. For example, a road with 2.5% camber has a camber of 1 in 40.
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Introduction:
Bitumen is a byproduct of refining petroleum crude through distillation. In its refined form, petroleum can be anything from the simplest hydrocarbon gas—methane—to the hardest bitumen, whose components have molecular weights in the millions. Thermoplastic amorphous aromatic rubber (TAR) is a byproduct of destructive distillation. Paving grades refer to bitumen that is used for waterproofing structures and industrial floors, whereas industrial grades are used for paving roadways and airfields.

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Introduction:
Maintenance of roads is the continual work to ensure they are in good shape for drivers and pedestrians. It entails normal maintenance, like fixing small problems like potholes and cracks in the pavement, and major repairs, such as repaving or reconstructing larger stretches of road. Regular road maintenance is crucial to ensure the safety of drivers, passengers, and pedestrians, avoid vehicle damage, and lessen traffic congestion. Depending on where you live, municipal, state, or federal governments may be responsible for road maintenance.

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Introduction:
Geocell is a cellular confinement system made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE) commonly used in road construction as a soil stabilization solution. Using geocell in road construction dates back to the 1970s when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers developed the technology to stabilize the ground for military applications. The first documented use of geocell in road construction was in the late 1980s when the technology was used to stabilize the shoulders of an access road leading to a copper mine in Chile. This initial use was successful, and geocell began to gain popularity as a solution for soil stabilization in road construction projects worldwide.

Over the years, the technology has evolved, and the use of geocell has expanded to include applications in retaining walls, erosion control, and even green roofs. Today, geocell is a widely accepted and cost-effective solution for soil stabilization in road construction projects, particularly in areas with poor soil conditions or unstable terrain.
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Introduction
Bitumen is obtained from the fractional distillation of crude petroleum. It has adhesive properties, and it has added oil while manufacturing the names of kerosene, spirit, volatile oils, etc. It is most widely used on roads as it is an excellent binder and binds the materials for durability, recyclability, and usability for roads. It is used widely used for the construction of flexible pavements. It has excellent waterproofing properties, low-cost material, and is dark or black. It is often confused with tar as it has similar properties. Tar is obtained by destructive distillation such as coal or wood, while bitumen is not. Apart from this, bitumen is soluble in carbon disulphide, and tar is soluble in benzene or nitrobenzene. It’s scope in improvement is limitless as it has flexibility in properties and is expected to be environment friendly during the course of time. All these properties and the effectiveness of bitumen are discussed here in this article.
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Introduction
Nowadays, all the energy resources are depleting due to our constant dependency on natural resources. At this stage, an urgency has emerged to harness the energy that can operate almost anything in the world. Likewise, in the civil engineering world, new inventions are emerging to make a greener world.

In the transportation sector, kinetic roads can help tackle pollution and our extensive dependency on natural resources. Solar radiation and kinetic energy from passing automobiles are two forms of energy sources frequently applied to road surfaces. As a result, they offer a lot of potential as long-term energy sources. Roadway pavement occupies a large portion of urban and rural areas, covering millions of square kilometers and constantly being exposed to various energy sources such as sun radiation, vibration, and traffic-induced pressures.

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Introduction
Interlocking Concrete Block Pavement (ICBP) has replaced the conventional concreting technique that required the use of traditional bricks and asphalt on the surface of the road. The traditional method was cumbersome as it required skill and accuracy to maintain the thickness of the road in addition to constant supervision by the site engineer. The roads had to be closed for hours as time was consumed in laying and mixing works. This problem was noticed by the higher authorities and the implementation of concrete blocks was recommended for ease of work.

The shape of such blocks varies as well as in size aspects because the design of these blocks constantly evolved during the years. The interlocking between the blocks was not good initially but as time went on, the design was modified so as to provide perfect interlocking. Interlocking is required to be perfect while laying as sand or other impurities might penetrate the gaps leaving the blocks isolated from the nearby blocks. This would result in breaking of the pattern and eventually the blocks would come out of the place. Hence, the works need to be precise on the field and is to be well monitored by the site engineers.

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Introduction
Raised pavement markers are reflectors on roads provided for safety purposes. These can be made up of ceramic, plastic, fibre, metal, concrete, glass, steel, etc. of various shapes and sizes. There are also non-reflector raised pavement markers like that of ceramic but these have disadvantages as they are not effective during night time. Nowadays, such reflectors have in-built light in them that emit lights which keep on blinking at night for safety purposes. Some other names for specific types of raised pavement markers include convex vibration lines, Botts’ dots, delineators, cat’s eyes, road studs, or road turtle.

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