Effect of Concrete Mixture and Strength Properties on Concrete Pavement Design

摘要

Many state highway agencies in the United States are transitioning from the 1993 AASHTO pavement design guide to the AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design (PMED) for designing new and rehabilitated pavements. PMED software allows designers to input material properties to characterize pavement layers at three levels of hierarchy from project-specific inputs from extensive laboratory test results to the default values included in the software. The software then predicts smoothness and selected pavement distresses. The primary objective of this study was to investigate the effect hierarchical levels of input concrete strength properties on jointed plain concrete pavement (JPCP) performance using the PMED software. Mixture and strength information for ten existing JPCP projects were collected. The information includes aggregate type, cement content, water to cement ratio, and 28-day Portland cement concrete (PCC) compressive strength. Standard empirical equations were used to determine PCC strength properties. Pavement sections were analyzed with these mixture and strength properties and the long-term JPCP performances were evaluated. Results show that there are no differences in faulting prediction due to change in input levels of PCC strength parameters. The international roughness index (IRI) model also did not show any sensitivity to hierarchical input levels of PCC strength parameters.