Evaluation of Self Compacting Concrete as a Pavement Material for Construction and Retrofitting

Abstract

Pavement performance evaluation and fatigue life determination is an important part of pavement design and analysis. Laboratory testing in itself could not totally predict these parameters as it is neither possible to simulate the traffic conditions, nor costly pavement prototypes could be constructed because of lack of space and specific equipment to evaluate the prototype performance. In this study a pavement prototype was constructed, and subsequently validated for a FEM model designed on ABAQUS. Self-compacting concrete (SCC) was used as it is easier to work upon during initial construction as well retrofitting. Pavement performance was studied in terms of deflections upon loading as well as fatigue life when normal pavement quality concrete pavement was retrofitted with similar concrete, and SCC respectively. It was found that after retrofitting with SCC also, the pavement performs better as the deflections were comparable in both situations, whereas the fatigue life of the pavement improved by a magnitude of nearly 20%. Improvement in load transfer through dowel bars helped the retrofitted pavement to take a greater number of load repetitions.