As part of an effort to develop a mechanistic design procedure for ultra-thin whitetopping (UTW) for asphalt pavement rehabilitation, this paper describes field instrumentation and testing and . performance evaluation of an experimental pavement section. The purpose of the testing was to obtain a better understanding of UTW pavement behavior under traffic loading and environmental effects, and to collect data for calibration and development of a mechanistic design procedure. The UTW pavement test section was located at the Spirit of St. Louis Airport, a general aviation airport in Chesterfield, Missouri, USA. The test sections consisted of six slabs with dimensions of 1.3 x 1.3 m and a design slab thickness of 89 mm, and were subjected to various field evaluations. It was observed from the evaluation that (1) there was very little vertical slab movement in spite of temperature differential in the slabs; (2) there was no apparent change in load-induced strains (stresses) with temperature changes; (3) pavement exhibited high load transfer efficiencies across contraction joints; and (4) a interface shear strength of 689 kPa was achieved by the commonly used technique for asphalt surface preparation, milling and cleaning. A recent performance review of this pavement also showed that this pavement has performed extremely well after over six years in service. Out of the 11,620 m~2 of UTW pavements (about 72,000 UTW panels), only 18 panels had cracked.
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