Prevention of Cracks in Pavements. Achievements and Open Questions

RILEM Technical Committees have been active since more than 15 years on the prevention of Reflective Cracking in Pavements. Papers published over that period in the proceedings of four RILEM international conferences devoted to this topic constitute an unmatched source of information for highway engineers. Extensive research, laboratory work, full scale trials and road condition surveys over the long term have been reported and in 1997 the information collected, joined to the practical experience gained by the RILEM committee members, was used to set up a state of the art report intended to be a reference for road engineers and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to summarize some achievements of the RILEM TC 157 PRC committee and to recall recommendations presented in the RILEM state of the art report. Another purpose of the paper is to open some questions that the author considers to be main future challenges for road construction and maintenance.