Early-age cracking behavior of advanced reinforced concrete pavement under environmental loading

The technological innovation of continuously reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP) that contains a significantly reduced amount of reinforcement and the same fundamental behaviour as CRCP is called advanced reinforced concrete pavement (ARCP). This new concept of a rigid pavement structure is developed to eliminate unnecessary continuous longitudinal steel bars of CRCP by using partial length steel bars at predetermined crack locations. In Belgium, partial surface saw-cuts are used as the most effective crack induction method to eliminate the randomness in early-age crack patterns by inducing cracks at the predetermined locations of CRCP. The reinforcement layout of ARCP is designed based on the distribution of steel stress in continuous longitudinal steel bar in CRCP and the effectiveness of partial surface saw-cuts as a crack induction method. The 3D finite element (FE) model is developed to evaluate the behaviour of ARCP with partial surface saw-cuts. The early-age crack characteristics in terms of crack initiation and crack propagation obtained from the FE simulation are validated with the field observations of cracking characteristics of the CRCP sections in Belgium. The finding indicates that ARCP exhibits the same cracking characteristics as CRCP even with a significantly reduced amount of continuous reinforcement.

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