Construction Cycle 2 CC-2 Phase II Single Slab
Construction cycle one CC-1 included three Portland cement concrete PCC test pavement placed on stabilized base, one above low strength subgrade, one above medium strength subgrade, and one above high strength subgrade. During trafficking the rigid pavements experienced premature top-down corner cracking due to upward curling at the slab corners. It was necessary to further investigate the curling phenomenon to avoid premature corner cracking in future rigid pavement research at NAPTF.
The objectives of this CC2 research phase were to:
- Construct an indoor single concrete slab within NAPTF;
- Characterize curling phenomenon within indoor environment using instrumentation and NDT;
- Determine the adequacy of the instrumentation system and monitoring system; and
- Gain experience in placing instrumentation in PCC slabs.
The outcomes from CC2 Phase II led to two modifications to the FAA airport pavement design procedures: i PCC pavement boundary conditions should be modified in order to calculate the critical bottom-up edge stress and ii the critical interior stress at the bottom of a slab does not need to be calculated in the procedure for pavement thickness design. The complete testing report including test results and findings can be found here.
Construction Traffic Testing