Document Type : Research Article
Abstract
The paving industry within the last century has developed extensively, mainly two paving technologies have targeted in this development, namely: flexible and rigid pavements. Although such technologies’ development is deeply enhanced, they still have unsolved shortcomings. Therefore, pavement researchers and engineers suggested benefiting from these two technology advantages by gathering them in a new technology called semi-flexible paving (SFP) to overcome the pointed shortcoming. The structural composition of SFP consists of porous asphalt, which contains air voids (25-35) % that inject with cementitious grout materials. As a result, the SFP surface course combines the pre-eminent qualities of bituminous pavements (flexible) and concrete (rigid). Serving the literature disclosed that the SFP has a very high resistance to the effect of traffic loads and weather conditions compared to conventional hot mix asphalt (HMA). Previous studies have shown that it can be applied in places with heavy traffic, i.e. heavy and slow traffic, for example, industrial areas, harbors, warehouses, distribution centers, road crossing, bus terminals, parking areas with heavy traffic, cargo centers, airports pavements, etc. Therefore, under uncontrolled high axle loads and extreme high summer and low winter ambient temperatures, SFP represents a suitable and achievable technique.