Environmentally optimised design: analysis of road performance in Ghana

Abstract

The deterioration of roads carrying low volumes of traffic depends as much on the environment as on the traffic being carried. Indeed, for very low volumes of traffic the deterioration caused by environmental factors is by far the most important. For heavily trafficked roads, in contrast, if they are not built to high enough standards of material strengths and thicknesses, the deterioration is dominated by traffic effects. The standards that have been adopted for pavement materials for such roads tends to be adopted for all roads and therefore the implication of this is that low volume roads could be built more economically if the environmental factors are taken into account properly in the design of the roads. The objective of this project is to develop design methods for this purpose and studies have been carried out in various environments in Africa. This report is one of a series of reports and describes the results of the study in Ghana