Experimental study on flexural fatigue performance of rubberised concrete for pavement

Abstract

ABSTRACT In order to study the probability distribution of flexural fatigue life of self-compacting rubberised concrete (SCRC), the flexural fatigue tests were carried out on 100 × 100 × 400 mm size beam specimens at different stress levels. The test results show that the probability distributions of fatigue life of SCRC can be approximately modelled by two-parameter Weibull distribution, and their fitting correlation coefficients are over 0.9. The shape parameter and scale parameter (two parameters of Weibull distribution) were estimated by different methods, namely the graphical method, the method of moments and the method of maximum likelihood estimates respectively, and it has been showed that the variability of fatigue life distribution of SCRC is higher when compared to plain concrete. The Pf – S – N curve (failure probability Pf , stress level S and fatigue life N) has been generated from the fatigue test data to predict the failure probability and corresponding stress level of the two-million cycle fatigue strength of SCRC. It has been proved that the fatigue performance of SCRC is better than that of the plain concrete by the S – N curve. And the fatigue failure process of SCRC was analyzed by acoustic emission (AE), showing obvious three-stage characteristic with the time.