Introduction

Composite pavement comprises of two or more pavement layers one of which is bituminous and the other is concrete. The concrete and bituminous pavements have their individual advantages and disadvantages which have been discussed elsewhere.  It is believed that composite pavement, if properly designed, can take of the disadvantages associated with the individual types of the pavements.

Though there could be composite pavements for fresh pavement constructions, most of the time, the composite pavement evolves due to rehabilitation projects where overlay is applied to the pavement. The composite pavement, thus, can be divided into two categories, (i) concrete overlay over bituminous pavement and (ii) bituminous overlay over concrete pavement. There could another category of pavement, where overlay consists of two layers, and the lower portion of the top overlay is made up of unbound granular material. This is called a sandwich pavement. Figure 29 schematically presents some examples of composite pavement.                      

                
Figure 29: Examples of different types of composite pavements