The Effect of Heavy Loads on the Stress Distribution at the Surface of a Crc Pavement

A continuosly reinforced concrete pavement has been laid in 1984 within the steel mill Sidmar near the city of Ghent in Belgium. This paper deals with the tests performed in 1987 on the pavement and the analysis of the results. A French device, called "Ovalimètre", made it possible to measure the strain at several levels in a series of boreholes under the passage of the load. Expansion strains, evidently due to tensile stresses, were observed at the surface. A computer model has been developed in order to take into account surface shear stresses. The values of the stresses, computed from the measured strains, were high enough to induce longitudinal superficial cracks, which indeed have been observed.