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16-Civ-A6 Highway Design, Construction, and Maintenance: December 2018

Nivaar worked solution (AI-drafted; not reviewed by a licensed engineer)

  1. Question 1 AASHTO 1993 flexible pavement design for a six-lane urban freeway
  2. Question 2 Horizontal curve adequacy, clear zone and spiral length
  3. Question 3 Rigid pavement — back-calculating the design ESAL and revising the slab
  4. Question 4 Crest vertical curve — reconstructing a rear-end collision
  5. Question 5 Design ESAL for a new urban freeway with staged traffic growth

Start with Question 1 →

Paper format. National Examinations, December 2018 — 16-Civ-A6 Highway Design, Construction, and Maintenance. Three-hour, closed-book paper with a ten-page appendix. Five questions are printed and four solutions constitute a complete paper; all questions carry equal value (25 % each) and the marks for sub-questions are shown in brackets. Note 1 invites the candidate to state any interpretation assumed, and Note 2 permits any required data that is not given to be assumed. All five questions are worked here, because the set is a study resource rather than an examination attempt.

Reference texts. AASHTO, Guide for Design of Pavement Structures, 1993 — Part II Ch. 2 (flexible pavements) and Ch. 3 (rigid pavements); Figures 2.5–2.7, 3.1, 3.3, 3.6, 3.7 and Tables 2.4–2.6 are reproduced on appendix pages 1–8. Garber, N.J. and Hoel, L.A., Traffic and Highway Engineering, 5th ed. — Ch. 3 (driver characteristics, stopping sight distance), Ch. 15 (geometric design), Ch. 20 (flexible and rigid pavement design). AASHTO, A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets (Green Book), 7th ed. — Ch. 3. Transportation Association of Canada, Geometric Design Guide for Canadian Roads — Ch. 1.2 (design controls), Ch. 2.1 (sight distance), Ch. 3.2 (horizontal alignment and spirals), Ch. 4 (roadside design and clear zones). AASHTO, Roadside Design Guide, 4th ed. — Ch. 3 (clear zone). Huang, Y.H., Pavement Analysis and Design, 2nd ed. — Ch. 11 and 12.

Check — chart readings and assumed data. Three of the five questions are solved from nomographs and tables reproduced on the appendix pages. Each chart reading used here was taken from the printed appendix chart and is quoted in the step where it is used, so that a reader working from a different print can substitute their own reading. Two items are genuinely not supplied by the paper and are assumed under Note 2: the percentage of time the pavement structure is near saturation in Question 1 (needed for the drainage coefficients $m_2$, $m_3$), and AASHTO Figure 3.4, the rigid-foundation correction needed in Question 3(b), which the ten-page appendix does not include. Both are flagged where they arise and the sensitivity of the answer to each is quantified.