Abstract
Under the repeated action of traffic and thermal loads, a cement concrete pavement slab may partially lose contact with its base course, and voids may develop underneath the slab. Such distress will greatly impact the pavement performance. To fill the voids and restore the base support to the slab, the technology of polymer grouting has been increasingly adopted in recent years due to its advantages of quick application and high efficiency. There is, however, a lack of research on the mechanistic responses and performance of such a repaired rigid pavement under coupled influences of thermal and traffic loads. Existing literature has mainly focused on normal cement concrete pavement structures (i.e., without polymer grouted voids). This study intends to fill the research gap by investigating the time-domain characteristics of thermal stress response of a cement concrete pavement with underlying voids filled with polymer grout, along with design traffic loads. The finite element method was adopted with a 3-dimensional nonlinear temperature field within the pavement. A program module was developed in the Abaqus FEA software environment for temperature effect analysis. It was found that under the coupling action of thermal and traffic loads, thermal stress had a greater influence on the critical slab stress at the slab corner than those at other slab locations. Through the comparative analysis before and after polymer grouting repair, the critical tensile stress at the slab corner under the vehicle and thermal loads can be effectively reduced. The polymer performance is stable after three years.
Highlights
Cement concrete pavement has been widely adopted for roads in China [1] due to its high load bearing capacity
Because the thickness of a concrete pavement is small compared to its areal dimensions, the temperature field in the pavement may be approximated by the one-dimensional heat transfer equation, as shown in the following equation [18]: zT z2T ρC zt K zz2, (4)
Tie bars are used along longitudinal joints and dowel bars are used along transverse joints, with a length of 0.41 m, a diameter of 0.026 m, and a spacing of 0.3 m, as shown in Figure 1. is structure was selected because it is consistent with the rigid pavement structure on S24 Expressway in Shandong Province, China, which had voids detected underneath the slabs and subsequently repaired by polymer grouting
Summary
Cement concrete pavement has been widely adopted for roads in China [1] due to its high load bearing capacity. There is a lack of research in the long-term performance of cement concrete pavements with voids repaired with polymer grout, Advances in Materials Science and Engineering the strain and stress responses of the slab, and the polymer grout to the coupled actions of thermal field and traffic loading. Is study intends to fill the research gap by investigating the temperature distribution and stress responses of a cement concrete pavement with underlying voids filled with polymer grout under the coupling effect of traffic load. With the developed FEA analysing tool, the temperature field and thermal stress in the concrete pavement are analyzed in detail in terms of the influence of solar radiation, wind speed, air temperature, and material parameters on the solar effect.
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