Draining removable urban pavement: a modular solution for versatile urban streets
Résumé
A concept of interconnected hexagonal concrete slabs layed on a new type of excavatable cementitious material was recently developed at Eiffel University. The objective of the concept, called removable urban pavement (RUP), is to allow rapid dismantling/ reconstruction operations. Expected advantages are an easy and fast access to the networks underneath, for maintenance or extension needs, a limited disturbance to neighborhood during works, no visible surface after-effects after works, and a better sustainability as concrete slabs can include recycled concrete aggregates and can be easily recycled, as it in an another street, or as aggregates. A small prototype, on a private access submitted to 30 heavy trucks per day during 10 years, furnished the proof of concept. Based on this experience, Eiffel University, in collaboration with Eiffage Infrastructures and Alkern companies developed a new type of RUP, which is also permitting high water drainability during rainfall as this property is becoming more and more pregnant in a context of climate change and violent climatic events.
After laboratory studies, a prototype made of 39 slabs was submitted to 200 000 wheel passages on the accelerated traffic simulator available at the university. Then a 180 m2 demonstrator was built during summer 2022 in Nantes city, and submitted to real traffic made of light vehicles and bus.
This paper summarizes the development of the draining RUP, describes the construction of the demonstrator and gives the first feedback in terms of skid resistance, rolling noise and its general mechanical behavior.