Evaluating Early-Age Stresses in Jointed Plain Concrete Pavement Repair Slabs

摘要

Jointed plain concrete pavement (JPCP) repair slabs experience high incidences of early-age cracking due to high temperature rise and increased autogenous shrinkage of high-early-strength (HES) concrete mixtures. This paper presents an investigation to evaluate early-age cracking mitigation strategies of JPCP repair slabs. Finite element analyses were performed to understand the effects of physical phenomena leading to early-age cracking in JPCP repair slabs. While the analyses indicate the importance of concrete hydration kinetics and viscoelastic behavior on the early-age stress development in slabs, concrete moisture loss to the base was found to be the most significant phenomenon. Numerical modeling of concrete slabs was found to be useful in predicting the stress development in advance of costly field trials. Therefore, the proposed modeling approach can be applied to evaluate the performance of concrete mixtures prior to slab placement and thus improve and economize the current rigid pavement maintenance practices.