Pavement Performance and Evaluation of a Four Years Old Concrete Road – Study of a Concrete Section of the E6 Road at Falkenberg in Sweden

Interest in concrete roads has increased in Sweden in recent years. Contributory factors are the increased traffic loadings, which demand more rigid types of pavements, and the excellent resistance of concrete roads to wear from studded tyres. This conference paper describes the pavement performance of a four-years-old concrete road that was built in 1993. In order to obtain good surface characteristics, the concrete road surface was constructed with exposed aggregate at the surface. As a reference an adjacent asphalt pavement section is used that was constructed with a wearing course of Stone Mastic Asphalt (SMA). After four years, both the concrete road and the asphalt road showed good results with regard to evenness, wear, friction and noise. The concrete road showed significantly less rutting than the asphalt road, however. This is explained by the fact that deformation ruts caused by heavy traffic do not appear in the concrete pavement during hot weather.