Non-Reinforced Concrete Pavements for Heavy-Load Service

Usually pavements for heavy load service are constructed with double reinforced concrete. Mostly their thickness is about 40 cm and – beside the high costs – there are structural problems with the placing and the design of joints, if unwanted cracks and steel corrosion should be avoided. In addi-tion to it is difficult to place and compact the special road concrete between the reinforcement bars placed in small space. There is also another solution. Today thickness design of non-reinforced concrete pavements is possible by systems of ultimate state limit like the German system/software AWDSTAKO. Within this software it is possible to introduce doweled joints in the construction, so that cracks are avoided. The result of theoretic thickness design, however, strongly depends on its inputs. Calcula-tions, for example, which don’t regard the tensile splitting strength of road concrete for a certain project, can not lead to a realistic result. Considering this and other influences like length and width of slabs as well as temperature influences, it is possible to design non-reinforced long life pave-ments, which are suitable for heavily loaded areas used by containers or reach stackers for exam-ple. Therefore expensive reinforced areas and their special damages can be avoided in this way. High loads exert a dominating influence on the necessary concrete thickness. In addition it is nec-essary to include the size of load area into calculation. This could be sometimes very small and therefore heightens the needed pavement thickness. In certain cases not only one, but some neighbouring loads are to be taken into account as well as the planned position of standing loads, for example in case of positioning of containers. Basic principles and possibilities of the above-named calculation program are shown in this report.