Performance Properties of GFRP Dowels in Concrete Pavement Joints

Abstract

Dowels are used in jointed plain concrete pavements to provide lateral load transfer across transverse joint through shear force, effective load transfer at lateral joints can reduces stresses in the slabs. Steel dowels are generally used in engineering practice, but corrosive substance such as carbon chloride ions ,dioxide can free access and easily dispersed along the length of the steel dowels, therefor rapid corrosion can occur which can lead to premature failure of the transverse joint. Glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) dowels have been recently introduced as a possible solution to the corrosion problem posed by steel dowels. This paper given a comparison of the maximum shear forces of none eroded GFRP dowel at the joint face with the help of a three-dimensional finite-element model and investigated the performance of GFRP dowels under static and cyclic load. According to the experiment results, the larger-diameter GFRP dowels were found to perform the best in this study.