Best Practice Design for Concrete Pavers for Canadian Municipal Applications

Interlocking concrete block pavements combine the advantages of concrete pavements with those of asphalt concrete pavements. Individual concrete blocks have a high stiffness and resistance to spills and deicing chemicals while the pavement system is flexible and is not susceptible to thermal cracking as with asphalt concrete pavements. While there has been extensive use of interlocking concrete block pavements for pedestrian and recreational areas in North America, their use for residential and municipal roadways significantly lags behind compared to their use in Europe and South Asia. This paper outlines the structural design of interlocking concrete block pavements for roadway design using an adaptation of the 1993 AASHTO Guide for the Design of Pavement Structures. Example pavement structures for a variety of subgrade, traffic and base conditions are provided along with their sensitivity to changes in design inputs. Finally, the use of the presented design matricies is shown through a series of case studies.