ABSTRACT
Rigid pavements aremostly found inmajor highways and airports. They also serve as heavy-duty industrial
floor slabs, port and harbor yard pavements, and heavy-vehicle park or terminal pavements. Rigid highway
pavements, like flexible pavements, are designed as all-weather, long-lasting structures to serve modern
day high-speed traffic. They offer high quality riding surfaces for safe vehicular travel, and function as
structural layers to distribute vehicular wheel loads in such amanner that the induced stresses transmitted
to the subgrade soil are of acceptable magnitudes. The load transmission mechanisms by which the
two forms of pavement achieve the load distribution requirement, however, are very different. Figure 9.1
shows that while the flexible pavement is designed to provide sufficient thickness to distribute the applied
load with depth, the rigid pavement relies on rigid slab action to spread the load over a large area.
