DESIGN OF FOOTWAY PAVING FLAGS.

In urban areas, precast concrete paving flags, which provide an aesthetically pleasing and uniformly comfortable walking surface, are the usual form of surfacing for pedestrian footways. With the introduction of pedestrianisation into urban areas, it has become necessary for highway design engineers to give consideration to a number of important problems, viz. the way in which pedestrian areas are surfaced; the provision of adequate access and specially strengthened routes for delivery and emergency vehicles, so that the pedestrian surface is not destroyed by those vehicles; the effects of the public utilities trenching and local authority routine maintenance activities. The computer based analytical modelling of the paving flag pavement, relied heavily upon the mathematical 'finite element method' of analysis. This method of analysis allowed the complex requirements of the laboratory testing, on-site vehicular loading and the paving flag test procedure to be interrelated to produce the required paving flag design package.