Effects of a nonuniform subgrade support on the responses of concrete pavement.

Details

• Creators:
  Brand, Alexander S. ; Roesler, Jeffery R. ; Chavan, Hemant L. ; Evangelista, Francisco
• Corporate Creators:
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Corporate Contributors:
  United States. Federal Highway Administration
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Concrete pavements
  • Compaction
  • Pavement layers
  • Finite element method
  • Subgrade (Pavements)
  • Pavement cracking
  • Pavement performance
  • Rigid pavements
  • Axle loads
  • Wheel loads
  More +
• Publication/ Report Number:
  ICT-13-027
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• ISSN:
  0197-9191
• Corporate Publisher:
  Illinois Center for Transportation
• NTL Classification:
  NTL-HIGHWAY/ROAD TRANSPORTATION-Pavement Management and Performance
• Abstract:
  Intelligent compaction is gaining attention for its ability to spatially map the compaction effort of a pavement support layer, and it has also ; been shown to be able to detect areas of nonuniform compaction, which raises the issue of what the effects of a nonuniform support ; condition are on the stresses and deflections in a rigid pavement. This study considered multiple nonuniform support conditions, including ; theoretically generated and predetermined and randomly assigned from measured field data. The slabs and nonuniform support ; conditions were modeled using two-dimensional and three-dimensional finite element methods with input variables being axle type, ; curling, and lateral and longitudinal axle movements. Overall the study found that certain nonuniform support conditions and axle ; positions can significantly increase the peak tensile stress in the slab over even uniform soft support. In particular, a single slab with soft ; longitudinal edge support and a slab with “randomly” assigned nonuniformities were critical cases that increased the peak slab tensile ; stresses. When the slab was modeled with preexisting through-length surface cracks, it was found that the nonuniform soft edges support ; conditions would result in unstable crack growth based on the significant increase in the stress intensity factor. When modeling a set of ; concrete slabs over a nonuniform support based on field data, the peak tensile stresses were increased relative to a uniform support ; based on the location of the wheel load relative to the nonuniformity and also based on the adjacent differences in nonuniform soil ; stiffness. The field data was also statistically reassigned by normal and beta distributions to predefined area sizes, which demonstrated ; that with a normal distribution, the probability of low k-values along the pavement edge increased thereby raising the probability of higher ; peak tensile stresses. Overall, certain nonuniform support of concrete slabs can produce much higher tensile stresses than a uniform ; support condition, particularly when considering different loading positions and curling conditions, soft support along the pavement edge, ; and preexisting cracks.
  More +
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  UILU-ENG-2013-2028
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/26466/dot_26466_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 10.97 MB]
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:40d521bf5ef66bd4036d94ec2cde2ea006c98c9ff62935976098fc23be7c4f11