Abstract:One of the main challenges of the accelerated pavement testing (APT) is reproducing the distress mechanisms that will cause the structural failure of the pavement in the field. This challenge is particularly difficult for jointed concrete pavements since some of their main distresses are driven by critical combinations of concrete hygrothermal conditions, slab’s support, and traffic loading that are very difficult to reproduce during the accelerated testing. Two such distresses are top-down cracking, either transverse or longitudinal, which is driven by simultaneous loading at distant locations, and faulting, which is driven by fines pumping produced by wheels moving at relatively high speed. Furthermore, while traffic loading is the main action that can be relatively easily controlled in the accelerated pavement testing, temperature and moisture-related shrinkage actions, just by themselves or in combination with traffic loading, result in slabs deformations and concrete tensile stresses that cannot be ignored. This paper presents a discussion of these and other limitations of the accelerated testing of jointed concrete pavements. The discussion is supported by modeling results and by experimental data collected during the testing of concrete pavements with the Heavy Vehicle Simulator in California.
Keywords: jointed plain concrete pavement, temperature gradients, drying shrinkage, top-down cracking, faulting, ambient environment action