Study of concrete pavement behavior in bonding condition between concrete slab and cemented or asphalt base.

Author(s)

Deividi da Silva Pereira

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Escola Politécnica (EP/BC)
• Defense date: 2003-07-31

Examining board members

Jose Tadeu Balbo; Rita Moura Fortes; Vladimir Antonio Paulon; Carlos Yukio Suzuki

• Advisor: Jose Tadeu Balbo

Abstract

This thesis intended to answer some inquiries, which arose during the alteration of the concrete pavement constructive process. This process substituted the plastic blanket by the asphalt emulsion, between the concrete slabs and the cemented bases. A laboratorial test methodology, specially adapted for the study of shear strength between the Portland cement concrete and the rolled concrete, inferred, for different types of interlayer treatments, high levels of shear strength, at the interfaces without asphalt emulsion. These shear strength levels enable the monolithic behavior of the pavement structure. When the asphalt emulsion was presented at the interlayer, the shear strength was much smaller than the former, with ductile rupture due to creep of the bituminous material. Two instrumented road tests, the first section in ultra-thin whitetopping pavement and de second one, in jointed plain concrete pavement (built according to new constructive process), and the finite element analyses led to important conclusions about the mechanical behavior of these pavement structures. This was possible because the strain-gages measured the specific concrete deformations during the dynamic load tests. The monolithic behavior of the ultra-thin whitetopping pavement was verified. There were good correlations between the measured stresses and theoretical stresses, which were calculated by the finite element method; and between the neutral axle displacements, estimated by analytical, numerical and experimental methods. With regard to the jointed plain concrete pavement, which was built over the cemented base (covered by the asphalt emulsion), great correlations between measured and simulated stresses were found, as well as it was found for ultra-thin whitetopping. However, it was not possible to conclude, definitively, concerning the mechanical behavior of this pavement structure, although there are clues that ndicated a non-monolithic behavior, that is, concrete slabs are unbounded up with the cemented base. (AU)