Countries that have little experience in concrete pavement design, application and operation, like Turkey, may face many difficulties while planning of concrete pavement construction (life-cycle, design, cost, technology and equipments etc.). We want to share as follows; managing the project, road map, learning phase, experiences, difficulties, mistakes and best practices...
PROMISING PROJECT – Concrete Roads
Movement of Unanchored Terminus of Continuously Reinforced Concrete Pavement
The longitudinal displacements of the terminus of the continuously reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP) without the terminal anchor lug system were measured and analyzed to investigate the maximum terminal joint width and the necessity of the anchor lug system. The terminal movements under environmental loads were measured at the CRCP sections...
Road and Railway Tunnels the Concrete Solution for Improving Passenger Safety and Emergency Response
Road tunnels and railway tunnels generally, located in sensitive sites, must not be considered simply as an extension of standard open-air sections. For the road tunnels, the thickness of the structure, its future maintenance and the consequences on traffic, as also the effect on lighting of pavement lightness have to...
Building Concrete Roundabouts in Switzerland
Since 2003, roundabouts in Switzerland have been built with concrete carriageways. Because space is at a premium due to the population density, the diameter of most roundabouts is less than 30 m. Roundabout carriageways with small diameters are subject to particularly high shear stress levels, which is why the choice...
The Rehabilitation of the Underpass Bleicherweg in Zürich
In Zurich the underpass Bleicherweg had to be maintained. An important part of the job was the pavement. The civil engineering department of the city of Zurich decided that the original asphalt pavement had to be replaced with a concrete pavement. The base of this decision, minimize possible water vapor...
Precast Concrete Pavement Innovations, Performance and Best Practices
The precast concrete pavement (PCP) technology is gaining wider acceptance in the US for rapid repair and rehabilitation of concrete pavements as well as for heavily trafficked asphalt concrete intersections. Although the US PCP technology is of recent origin, with projects less than about 12 years old, many projects have...
Pavement Type Hysteresis and Truck Rolling Resistance
Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) pavements usually incur higher investment costs than Asphalt Concrete (AC) alternatives. In a life cycle analysis the higher cost is justified by lower maintenance costs, less and fewer traffic flow intrusions, and a longer technical life. All these factors contribute to a reduction of the carbon...
Surface Stresses of Thick Concrete Pavement Slabs Due To Traffic Loads and Non-Linear Temperature Distributions
In this study, possibility of top-down cracking in concrete pavement was investigated. The main cause of the crack is supposed to be tensile stress at the top of the concrete slab. 3DFEM simulations that took into account actual temperature distributions throughout slab depth were performed on concrete pavements for a...
Methodology for Establishing Permanent Curl/Warp Temperature Gradients in Jointed Plain Concrete Pavements
Jointed plain concrete pavements curl due to temperature gradients and warp in the presence of drying shrinkage gradients. Since this deformation is restrained by factors, such as the slab self-weight, tensile stresses are generated. Slabs do not remain flat in the absence of daily gradients. This is due to the...
Structural Modeling of Rigid Pavement with Load-rate Dependent Subgrade
It has been observed by many researchers that the subgrade behavior is load rate dependent. The apparent subgrade stiffness is much higher under the fast moving axle loading than during the slow developing temperature curling and moisture warping. However, traditionally a single k-value is used for both curling and axle...
Causes and effects of longitudinal shrinkage and temperature stresses on JPCP for Dutch conditions
In 2010 Houben has published a paper on the modelling of the process of cracking at transverse joints in jointed plain concrete pavements (JPCP). Houben uses equations from the standard Eurocode 2 for the time-dependent concrete properties and considers the thermal deformation and the shrinkage (drying and autogenous) for different...
Evaluation of the Linear Damage Assumption in JPCP Bottom-up Fatigue Cracking
Current pavement design guides for Jointed Plain Concrete Pavements define one critical location at the mid-slab edge and assume that damage accumulates linearly and can be described via S-N curves. More recently, experiments have shown that damage does not accumulate linearly and a pronounced stress range effect exists. These two...