Fracturing Concrete Pavement Technology

There are a large number of concrete pavements in Australia, with many dating back to the first half of the 20th century. These concrete pavements are still in use today, and since the time these pavements were constructed, we have seen an evolution in traffic volumes and the size of vehicles traveling on our roads. A significant amount of these concrete pavements are nearing the end of their intended design life. This means that we are on a fast-track to replace a lot of these old pavements within a short period of time, and the cost to do so will be substantial. Pavement rehabilitation extends the service life of an existing pavement and/or improves its loadcarrying capability through direct structural modification. These rehabilitations are designed to extend the life of the existing concrete pavement by restoring structural capacity through the elimination of cracking or by increasing pavement thickness to accommodate existing or anticipated traffic loads. With this in mind, we have identified that the rehabilitation of failed concrete pavements is possible using available, proven, concrete fracturing technology. The concrete fracturing methods available are: Crack and Seat; Rubblisation and Break for Removal. This pavement technology has been utilised successfully since the 1990’s, in the United States, Europe, Great Britain, Africa, India, Japan and China. Once the existing pavement has been fractured, this pavement can be used as a sound structural base that can overlaid with a new concrete pavement. Concrete overlays can be used to improve surface characteristic issues, reduce noise, improve skid resistance and improve ride quality. Alternatively, this process can be used to break the pavement for removal, providing an efficient breaking process, where the concrete pavement is broken to a size that meets the required removal, hauling and crushing needs. Typically, this breaking process is 8 times faster at breaking concrete than traditional methods. The single largest benefit of concrete fracturing is that concrete fracturing allows us to transform concrete pavements with ride or other performance issues into a high-quality, non-moisture sensitive, stable platform for a new pavement surface at a fraction of the cost and time of reconstruction.