New Hungarian Regulations for Concrete Pavements and their Application in Hungary

The first concrete pavement was built in Hungary with ABG slip form paver on motorway M7 between Budapest and Lake Balaton. After 30 years, concrete pavement was built again on the Motorway M0 around Budapest. The limited performance capacity of asphalt pavements on expressways and motorways made it necessary to turn to the concrete pavements again. The development of the last 30 years up in design, technology and regulations was followed. When Hungary became member of the European Union, it updated its regulations, renewed the technology for concrete pavements. Before starting with the construction of a concrete pavement, the experiences were collected on construction of test sections with different surface finish techniques used for the preparation of the Construction Technical Permission (ÉME). This paper contains the most important specifications for design, quality control, test methods and qualification criteria. The new Road Technical Directives was introduced in 2006 and based on a 28 km-long new motorway section built on motorway M0. In 2008, the specification for concrete pavements with exposed aggregate was introduced. The reconstruction and extension of the existing motorway M0 to 2*3 lanes will be carried out using this technology.