The Design and Maintenance of Contraction Joints Behaviour of the Namur Test Road After 10 Years of Traffic

This article describes the behaviour after 10 years of service of the test sections constructed in 1979 on State road N 4 in the Belgian province of Namur, The object of this experiment, is to compare various types of contraction joint on the same site and under the same conditions of climate and traffic: dowelled or undowelled joints, sealed or unsealed joints, and slabs of vari-able length-some of which were given an extra width.A second experiment was carried our at the end of 1985 andearly in 1986, this time with the objective of testing the effec-tiveness of joint sealing techniques. Several variants were triedwith respect to the nature of the sealant, the width of the sealinggroove, and the technique of application of the product.