There are mainly two problems faced by the construction industry that is the quality control of the construction and the speed of any construction or completion of the project. This is especially important for road projects as they are spread out over many kilometers and maintaining the quality as well as speed becomes a major problem. An average of 2-3% GDP loss in India is due to road congestions due to slow road construction. There are primarily two types of roads being constructed; those are bituminous road or concrete roads. While bituminous roads can be constructed very fast, its design life is only 10 years and requires frequent maintenance. Alternatively, Concrete Road take a lot of construction time but its design life is 30 years and the maintenance requirement is also very less. In both the cases, a considerable amount of traffic disturbance is expected. An improved type of road construction is required which can provide long life, can be constructed very fast and does not require heavy maintenance. This can be achieved using Prestressed Precast Concrete Pavement (PPCP) Technology.
What is PPCP?
PPCP is a technology, wherein, panels are pre-tensioned in a casting yard. The concreting and curing is done there, and then they are transported and placed at the construction site. It’s very easy to maintain the quality of the road as casting is done in a controlled environment. Additionally, in case any of the PPCP panels exhibit cracks or lack of quality, that panel can be rejected at yard, thereby ensuring that the quality of the final road is always up to the mark.
The primary advantages of PPCP are:
- Ease of maintaining quality
- Fast Construction (indirect economic benefit): The construction duration can reduce from 30 days to 5 days which further helps save the diversion cost and user fuel consumption.
- Economical Construction
- Durable Roads: PPCP can provide the best quality pavement having a life of 50 years (as compared to concrete road having 30 years of life).
- Eco-Friendly: The thickness of PPCP panels is less than the regular concrete road and hence contributes in reducing the carbon footprint by almost 70%.
PPCP can be used for repair of roads, construction of temporary roads, and construction in adverse climatic conditions where other types of roads cannot be constructed. It can be constructed in the most congested areas at night and the traffic can be allowed in the day. It further has the scope of adding sensors into the panels to detect the footfall and vehicle movement over the panels. Removable roads can be constructed using PPCP, by the virtue of which, any utility work under the road can be done without destroying the road.
Projects completed in India
CC Precast Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Is India’s first company to be involved in the design and construction of Prestressed Precast Concrete Pavement (PPCP).
- India’s 1st PPCP road was constructed in VNIT, Nagpur
- Lane length: 25m
- Width: 3m
- Thickness: 150mm
- INNER RING ROAD, Nagpur
- Lane length: 900m
- Width: 10.5m
- Thickness: 200mm
- RAJEEV NAGAR, Hingna, Nagpur
- Lane length: 900m
- Width: 5.5m
- Thickness: 200mm
- UltraTech RMC Plant Project, Banglore
- Lane length: 12m
- Width: 3.5m
- Thickness: 200mm
- DEOLAMETHI, Nagpur
- Lane length: 260m
- Width: 3.5m
- Thickness: 200mm
- India’s largest Prestressed Precast Concrete Road at PATHAN CHOWK, Amravati
- Lane length: 1900m
- Width: 10m
- Thickness: 200mm
Conclusion
- Futuristic green technologies like solar power, self-charging vehicles etc. can be incorporated in PPCP technology.
- This technology should be executed in urban areas as there are traffic congestions issues, due to diversion of traffic it increases the user cost, pace of PPCP construction is very fast due to which delay in ambulance can be reduced significantly.
- Major problems of rural areas is quality of road which can be easily tackle by using PPCP as it’s a factory made product, in difficult terrain and bad weather conditions also it can be used.
