Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-2007

Journal or Book Title

Magazine of Concrete Research

Volume

59

Issue

8

First Page

599

Last Page

609

DOI

10.1680/macr.2007.59.8.599

Abstract

In the current paper, the effect of curling and warping, caused by environmental ambient conditions, on the initial smoothness of concrete pavements is discussed. Surface profile measurements were made during the hours of the early morning and late afternoon on an instrumented jointed plain concrete pavement (JPCP) on highway US-30 near Marshalltown, Iowa during the first seven days after construction in summer 2005. Variations in temperature and moisture during this critical period were monitored using the temperature and relative humidity sensors installed within the test sections at the time of construction. Based on the measured surface profile data, it was observed that the initial pavement smoothness, in terms of international roughness index (IRI) and the ride number (RN), was not significantly influenced by the early-age curling and warping behaviour of the JPCP. Using finite-element modelling (FEM), sensitivity studies were conducted to investigate the influence of slab curvature on initial pavement smoothness for a range of equivalent temperature differences between the top and bottom of the slab. The results indicated that the initial JPCP smoothness is sensitive to changes in slab curvature resulting from environmental ambient conditions only at higher magnitudes. Although the FEM-based IRI predictions were higher than the surface profile-based IRI values, the differences were not significant.

Research Focus Area

Environmental/Water Resources Engineering, Construction Engineering and Management

Comments

This article is from Magazine of Concrete Research 59 (2007): 599-609, doi: 10.1680/macr.2007.59.8.599. Posted with permission.

Copyright Owner

Thomas Telford Ltd

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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