A Cementitious Long-Life Wearing Course to Reduce Frequency of Maintenance Works on High-Traffic Roads

Under the framework of OECD/CEMT JTRC, an international team of road research laboratories worked together in order to evaluate technical solutions for long-life pavement. As a matter of fact, there are in many countries highly trafficked road sections where any traffic disruption brings high external costs. For such a case, the aim was to study wearing courses that could last several decades with no maintenance. The paper briefly presents an innovative technical solution, called HPCM (High-Performance Cementitious Material), consisting of a thin layer of ultra-high performance fibre-reinforced mortar with calcined bauxite aggregate embedded in the surface when in a fresh state. Many laboratory and two full-scale tests were carried out, dealing with surface resistance (abrasion, wear, shocks, freeze-and-thaw, acid attacks), cracking under restrained shrinkage and fatigue resistance due to heavy traffic loading. Although this material still requires some additional research to be implemented on scale-1 road sites, there are good expectations of its potential durability.