Evaluation Of Concrete Pavement Joint Performance At The FAA National Airport Pavement Test Facility

Abstract

On November 08, 2018, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Airport Pavement Testing Facility (NAPTF) completed a full-scale test on concrete airport pavements comparing joint types, as part of NAPTF Construction Cycle 8 (CC8). The objective of this experiment was twofold: (a) compare the performance of a new type of sinusoidal keyway joint with standard doweled longitudinal construction joints; and (b) compare the performance of doweled versus undoweled transverse contraction joints. The indoor test pavement consisted of twelve slabs divided into four groups according to the joint types. All four groups received traffic from a full-scale dual-wheel landing gear configuration using the FAA National Airport Pavement Test Vehicle (NAPTV). All test items were trafficked to failure. Performance of the joints was analyzed using data from heavy-weight deflectometer (HWD) tests and from embedded strain gages to determine load transfer values. For equal traffic, the sinusoidal design of keyway joints demonstrated performance at least equivalent to standard doweled joints. As expected, doweled transverse contraction joints maintained high load transfer throughout the traffic test and were much less sensitive to temperature variations than the undoweled joints. For both types of longitudinal construction joints and for doweled contraction joints, stress-based load transfer values across the joint exceeding 30% were observed. This is significant because the FAA's FAARFIELD design procedure assumes 25% load stress transfer for rigid pavement design.