Slab Curling and Rolling Resistance

In a life cycle analysis a higher investment 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 footprint. To further improve the sustainability of PCC pavements the rolling resistance should be lower on stiff and elastic materials. To prove this thesis, studies of fuel consumption have been made where a truck is driven over different pavement types. However, it is difficult to precisely access how much can be attributed to the pavement inter-nal structure. Many factors affect the rolling resistance, such as roughness, texture, air flow et cetera. The present paper presents a different approach analyzing data from a falling weight deflectometer, (FWD). Pavement hysteresis is assessed by evaluating time histories. Thus, energy losses due to the properties of the pavement structure can be estimated. For plain jointed concrete pavements, the energy used is higher near the edge of the slab. The present paper investigates the effect of upward curling on the rolling resistance.