Experimental study on foam concrete as a sub-base layer of rigid pavement

Abstract

Rigid pavement consists of three main layers, the base, sub-base and subgrade. Engineers mainly prefered choosing rigid pavement for heavy load road construction because the concrete mixture in this type of pavement has advantages in terms of strength, durability and design life. However, rigid pavement also has several disadvantages: relatively high construction and maintenance costs. As time goes by, researchers have developed several modified concrete mixtures; one of them is foam concrete. Foam concrete has strength similar to concrete in general but with a lighter mass and more affordable construction cost. This study examines foam concrete’s mechanical properties and properness as a sub-base layer on a rigid pavement. The research was conducted experimentally in the lab with five different densities of foam concrete mixture. The results showed that sample with a density of 1.0 g/cm3 has passed the minimum compressive and flexural strength values at 0.896 MPa and 0.0059 MPa respectively. This also indicates that increasing the density of a foam concrete mixture may increase its compressive and flexural strength but also lose its advantage of being a lightweight material as more density means more weight. Thus, it can be concluded that using foam concrete as a sub-base layer of rigid pavement is more advantageous in implementing rigid pavement construction.