Aplicação de pavimentos de concreto: estudo de caso do Terminal Antônio Bezerra – Fortaleza, CE

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative study between the executive project adopted in the Terminal Antonio Bezerra and technical studies on the technology employed. Performance characteristics and materials adopted in the project are described and considered for analysis. The thickness of the concrete slab is determined by two different methods: PCA (1994) and AASHTO (1993). Both methods assume similar material parameters, loads and traffic. These results are compared to the actual design parameters used in practice. The paper methodology was developed from collecting traffic and load data from the companies that run the Terminal operation. Visits during the execution exposed the pavement models adopted for the project. After field investigation, the concrete slab design using granular material and rolledcompacted concrete as subbase materials was performed. The results were compared and indicated that the PCA method requests a 5% increase in the slab thickness in relation to the executive project, whilst the AASHTO method resulted in a 20% increase. A cost investigation, involving the pavement layers was accomplished and has shown a 4.5% reduction in cost due to the use of rolled-compacted concrete instead of granular material for the base layer. This decrease is due to a 10.5% reducing on the concrete slab thickness. The study serves as a preliminary proposal for the concrete pavement design in future urban terminals in Fortaleza, taking the Terminal Antonio Bezerra, the first to be renovated with the technology, as a reference.