Sustainability and cost-effectiveness of steel and polypropylene fiber reinforced concrete pavement mixtures

Abstract

By improving cracking performance, the use of discrete structural fibers allows to produce high performance concrete pavements with decreased thickness and without conventional reinforcement bars, so employment of them might be considered to enhance the sustainability of concrete pavements. However, the number of studies that examines the overall effectiveness of fibers in concrete pavement mixtures are limited, and this study was conducted to fill this gap in literature. In this scope, the efficiency of fibers (polypropylene and steel) in different concrete pavement mixtures and the effect of using them in varying amounts on the performance of concrete pavements were examined by doing an extensive experimental and numerical study. According to the experimental results, similar strength, stiffness, absorption, and porosity, but higher abrasion resistance and post-cracking performances were obtained for fiber reinforced concrete mixtures. In line with the post-cracking performances obtained for them, 2.2–19.8% and 15.9–27.5% reduction in required thickness values were found for polypropylene and steel fiber reinforced mixtures, respectively. Additionally, varying changes in pavement material costs (from 9.1% to 139.8% increase) and CO2 emissions (from 12.8% increase to 16.4% decrease) were obtained for FRC mixtures. Observations were found heavily dependent on the type and amount of fibers, as well as properties of concrete matrices. In the paper, several discussions and suggestions were provided to explain the reason and importance of the obtained results, and the authors believe that the paper will be beneficial for the following research studies and design works.