Suggested Citation:
Mateos, Angel, Md Mostofa Haider, Somayeh Nassiri, Dulce Feldman, John T. Harvey, Jeremy D. Lea, Ali A. Butt (2025)

Year-Twenty Performance Review of the First 40 Year Design Life Jointed Plain Concrete Pavements in California

This paper evaluates the half-life performance of the first three 40 year design life jointed plain concrete pavements built in California, in the early 2000s. The projects, two on I-15 and one on I-40, have a combined total length of 420 lane kilometers (260 lane miles), are in desert areas, and have heavy truck traffic. The pavement performance evaluation used data from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) pavement-management system (PMS) databases, including pavement condition surveys, field data, and construction histories. An in situ evaluation of the projects done in 2022 included measurement of international roughness index (IRI), visual inspection, coring, and falling-weight deflectometer testing. Cores were extracted to explain the field performance based on the modulus of elasticity, compressive strength, electrical resistivity, coefficient of thermal expansion, water absorption, and degree of hydrations of concrete. Overall, the performance of the projects has been excellent so far: the transverse and third-stage cracking (slabs with two or more cracks) is essentially zero in all lanes, faulting is also essentially zero, longitudinal cracking is not severe, and the IRI has been stable since construction. Concrete mix designs and properties from cores correspond to durability observations. AASHTOWare Pavement ME analysis supports the excellent performance of the projects. Further, none of the three projects has required any maintenance or rehabilitation activity since their construction. The outcomes of this study support Caltrans’ adoption of 40 year designs as the standard design life of concrete pavements and encourage the consideration of longer design lives.