Whitetopping – A Quick and Cheap Way to Resolve Rutting

Congestion on German roads increases permanently from year to year. According to the latest prognosis an end to the traffic increase – especially with regard to heavy traffic – is not in sight. At the same time the Federal government, the German states and communities lack capital for new infrastructure measures and for urgently needed repairs. As a result, the roads get more and more damaged since the whole road construction is often no longer sufficient for today’s traffic demands. The whitetopping construction method, originating from the United States, is a rapid, cost-saving and sustainable solution for the maintenance and the retrofitting of damaged and / or undersized asphalt traffic zones. It can be used in various application fields such as highways, federal and country roads as well as communal and private roads, manoeuvring surfaces, industrial sites and parking areas. Whitetopping is the ideal solution for the elimination of damaged trouble spots in the inner city area such as traffic lights, crossroads, bus lanes and bus stops where lane grooves and displacements, so-called “washboards”, have often developed due to high dynamic stress of the road surface. With regard to ecological and economical aspects the combined whitetopping construction method offers a couple of advantages: In contrast to conventional reconstruction methods neither parts of the road construction nor the whole pavement have to be removed. For the reconstruction of replacement constructions only the upper layer of the damaged asphalt surface has to be milled off. Subsequently, the thus exposed surface has to be cleaned thoroughly. In order to reinforce a pavement in the overlay construction the deformations are usually levelled by means of a thin asphalt layer and are afterwards overbuilt with a UTW or TWT layer. In both cases the remaining asphalt serves as base for the concrete [figure 1]. The major advantages of the whitetopping construction method are its rapidity, cost-effectiveness and sustainability. Thus almost every traffic surface can be repaired at low cost and sustainably with comparably low effort, provided that the foundations respectively the road construction is still sufficiently stable and sound.