U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration

MEMORANDUM

The need for preserving our highway infrastructure has challenged us to look at new and improved strategies for conserving and prolonging the life of our pavements. One of our goals is to ensure timely highway maintenance to increase the overall quality and cost effectiveness of our pavements. Pavement maintenance operations can be grouped in two categories, corrective and preventive. Corrective maintenance is performed to restore distressed pavements to an acceptable condition. Preventive maintenance is intended to preserve, rather than improve, the structural capacity of a pavement. Load transfer restoration at transverse joints and working cracks of concrete pavements fits both categories. The technique has been proven to cost effectively delay faulting, comer and transverse cracking, and pumping of concrete pavements while prolonging their life. Load transfer restoration is also an essential part of any good Concrete Pavement Rehabilitation (CPR) program. When combined with other CPR techniques, it offers many years of smooth, quiet rides for the traveling public.

Attached you will find the technical publication entitled Concrete Pavement Rehabilitation - Guide for Load Transfer Restoration, publication number FHWA-SA-97-l03. The publication provides guidance on the project selection, design, materials, and construction requirements of this proven technique. We have also included a video tape of the various construction processes used by the Washington State, Kansas and Indiana Departments of Transportation (52 minutes total time). We request that the Division Administrators send two copies of the package to their respective State Department of Transportation. Additional copies are available upon request. This updates preliminary guidance furnished by Messrs. Ferragut and Papet's February 10, 1994 memorandum.

Please call Angel L. Correa at 202-366-0224, or Roger Larson at 202-366-1326, if you have any questions or need additional copies.

/s/ original signed by
Byron N. Lord
T. Paul Teng

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