Construction of Extended Life Continuously Reinforced Concrete Pavements at ATREL

Abstract

This report summarizes the design and construction of ten extended life continuously reinforced concrete pavement test sections at the Advanced Transportation, Research, and Engineering Laboratory (ATREL). The ten sections were designed and constructed to determine 1) thickness design curves versus traffic levels, 2) the viability and necessity of 2 layers of reinforcing steel, 3) the design steel content to achieve the desired crack width and spacing, 4) the optimal depth of steel from the Portland cement concrete (PCC) surface, 5) the load transfer efficiency deterioration rate across the cracks, and 6) the effect of uniformly induced crack spacing on the performance of the CRCP. The soil investigation on the test site along with dynamic cone penetrometer tests were included in this report. Material properties were gathered and documented for each pavement layer. The instrumentation and data acquisition system used to collect early-age and long-term temperature, strain, and deflection measurements were summarized. Falling weight deflectometer test results and initial crack surveys were presented.