Fracture Properties of Roller-Compacted Concrete with Virgin and Recycled Aggregates

Roller-compacted concrete (RCC) pavement has renewed interest among designers as a sustainable pavement option with the potential to lower total cement content, incorporate recycled aggregates, reduce road closure time, and decrease total project costs. One main design challenge is whether RCC can a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Transportation research record 2014-01, Vol.2441 (1), p.128-134
Main Authors: Ferrebee, Eric C., Brand, Alexander S., Kachwalla, Abbas S., Roesler, Jeffery R., Gancarz, Daniel J., Pforr, James E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aggregates
Concretes
Constituents
Fracture mechanics
Mixes
Pavements
Recycled
Slabs
Strength
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Summary:Roller-compacted concrete (RCC) pavement has renewed interest among designers as a sustainable pavement option with the potential to lower total cement content, incorporate recycled aggregates, reduce road closure time, and decrease total project costs. One main design challenge is whether RCC can achieve the same performance life as conventional portland cement concrete (PCC) pavement with similar slab thickness. This research investigated the strength and fracture properties of RCC containing virgin aggregates and fractionated reclaimed asphalt pavement (FRAP) relative to conventional PCC to address this design challenge. The compressive and split tensile strengths of the RCC mixes showed similar strengths to the same constituents in PCC. RCC containing FRAP had lower strengths than did RCC with virgin aggregates. The critical stress intensity factor and the initial and total fracture energies were not statistically different between the RCC mixes containing virgin and FRAP aggregates. Overall, the RCC fracture properties were found to be significantly higher than those of conventional PCC. At lower stress ratios, RCC fatigue data from laboratory beam tests predict lower fatigue life relative to PCC; this result translates to a thicker RCC pavement. Large-scale testing has shown that the flexural capacity of PCC slabs is strongly related to the concrete fracture properties despite differences in beam flexural strength. Because these RCC fracture properties were shown to be higher than similar constituents used in conventional paving concrete, RCC designs could employ similar PCC fatigue curves for certain conditions, such as when the RCC fracture properties are equivalent to or greater than those of conventional PCC.
ISSN:0361-1981
2169-4052
DOI:10.3141/2441-17