Mechanistic-Empirical Design Concepts for Jointed Plain Concrete Pavements in Illinois

摘要

The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) currently has an existing jointed plain concrete pavement(JPCP) design method based on mechanistic-empirical (M-E) principles. The objective of this research was toprovide IDOT with an improved design process for JPCP based on new research findings over the past 15years. Existing JPCP methods such as the Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) werereviewed. Two conclusions from the review of current design methods were that a geographic specifictemperature and site specific load spectra analysis were not necessary at this time to produce reasonableconcrete thicknesses. A single climate zone and the ESAL concept to represent mixed truck traffic are thereforestill recommended for the state of Illinois based on current rigid pavement design technology. A newmechanistic-empirical design process was proposed based on the principles of the current IDOT method. Thisnew design process was implemented into a spreadsheet program to allow for rapid plotting of design chartsand also to enable pavement engineers to readily conduct special design studies that may be warranted whencertain inputs fall outside the recommended values used to plot the new design charts. The new design inputsare pavement layer and slab geometry, material layer properties, concrete strength, ESALs, slab-base interfacebond condition, temperature curling analysis type, shoulder type, and a reliability-based fatigue algorithmderived from laboratory beam tests. Due to the limited JPCP performance data, the recommended designprocess did not use a field calibrated damage-to-cracking model but was verified against the existing JPCPmethod.