Concrete Block Pavements for Roads
Brajendra Singh, Chief Consultant, Cement Manufacturers’ Association, New Delhi
Road surfaces may be paved or unpaved. Paved roads have flexible, rigid or a combination of the two types of surfaces. Rigid pavements consist of several types. They could be made from concrete; they could be brick-paved or cobble stoned. They could also be sheer rock, as my personal experience has shown. Several years ago, I was the engineer-in-charge of carving out a road from the highly mountainous terrain of the Spiti Valley. Long stretches of the proposed road passed through sheer cliffs made out of solid rock. Cutting the alignment in such areas with individual hand-held, petrol motor powered drills, while suspended from ropes in mid-air, was an extremely instructive experience, but its details are not relevant to this article. What is relevant is that after the required width (normally 3 to 5 metres) had been scooped out of the virgin rock, we just did not have any material to lay on the road surface. So we let the cut remain as it were, the uneven but hard rock along its base acting as the road surface.
