Design and construction of sustainable pavements: Austrian and German two-layer concrete pavements

Several recent efforts in U.S. pavement research deal with creating sustainable technologies and designs that use composite pavements, that is, pavements with heterogeneous asphalt, concrete layers, or both, resulting from new construction. Although there are several asphalt-over-concrete composites in the United States, in the case of two-layer portland cement concrete (PCC) pavements there has been little research or expertise in the United States despite the wide acceptance of two-layer PCC as a solution for pavements in parts of the European Union (EU). The EU experience is described in this paper in terms of German and Austrian case studies. After the case studies, the major benefits of two-layer PCC and potential challenges in importing, adapting, and implementing German and Austrian techniques are discussed.