Abstract
Reflective cracking at transverse joints is considered as a predominant distress in composite pavements. Various interlayers have been used previously to prevent or retard reflective cracking. Engineered cementitious composite (ECC) is a special type of high-performance fiber-reinforced cementitious material that is expected to perform better as an interlayer due to its higher tensile strength and ductility. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of ECC as an interlayer system experimentally. A laboratory test protocol was designed to simulate repeated traffic loads to measure the fatigue performance of ECC interlayer system using digital image correlation (DIC) technique. It was found that the composite pavement specimens with ECC interlayer provided significantly higher fatigue life as compared to the control specimens without interlayer. This result indicates that ECC could be used as a potential effective interlayer system to retard or mitigate reflective cracking.
Highlights
When hot mix asphalt (HMA) layer is constructed over an existing Portland cement concrete (PCC) layer, significant tensile strain originates at the bottom of the HMA at transverse joints
It is clear that without any Engineered cementitious composite (ECC) interlayer, one single reflective crack propagates from bottom to top, whereas with the presence of ECC interlayer, multiple cracks propagate from the bottom of HMA and they join together at the time of failure
It was found that the ECC interlayer specimens showed higher flexural stress level at failure (14 MPa) as oppose to the control specimens which failed at stress level of 8.6 MPa
Summary
When hot mix asphalt (HMA) layer is constructed over an existing Portland cement concrete (PCC) layer, significant tensile strain originates at the bottom of the HMA at transverse joints Such strains are caused due to high stress concentration from heavy traffic loads, changing temperature, and lack of base support. Amini [4] evaluated the performance of paving fabrics to delay reflective crack propagation He found that fabrics improved pavement life in general, but there were cases where fabrics provide little or no improvement. Using composite specimen interface cracking tests, the efficiency of asphalt rubber membrane interlayer (ARMI) was examined by Chen, Lopp and Roque [7] They found that ARMI cannot delay reflective cracking. They reported that geogrid provided maximum life when it was placed at a one-third depth of overlay thickness from the bottom
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