Horizontal Cracking in Portland Cement Concrete Pavements: Literature Review; Technical rept. (Sept. 2006 - Feb. 2008)

摘要

Until recently, full-depth punchout was considered the only structural distress in continuously reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP). However, over the last few years, during punchout repair projects, it was discovered that CRCP distresses identified as full-depth punchout were actually caused by partial-depth horizontal cracking (HC) at the depth of longitudinal steel. Quite often, the bottom portion of concrete was solid, with no cracking. It appears that horizontal cracking in CRCP might have existed from the early days of CRCP usage, although not recognized until recently. Consequently, there are very few publications available on this issue. As a first report in this research project, this report summarizes the findings of three papers related to horizontal cracking. Two papers were identified that addressed HC in CRCP. Out of those two, one paper provides general discussion on HC in CRCP, without detailed analysis. The other paper investigated the effects of environmental loading, material properties, and design variables on HC in CRCP. Two dimensional plain strain finite element modeling was used to analyze the effects of temperature variations along the slab depth, coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) and modulus of elasticity of concrete, and number of steel layers.