Performance of dowel bars and rigid pavement : executive summary.

759600971Executive summary.PDFTech ReportFHWA/HWY-01/2001State job no. 14667(0)Reinforcing barsRigid pavementsJoints (Engineering)Concrete pavementsReinforced concrete pavementsOhioOhio Research Institute for Transportation and the EnvironmentSargand, Shad M.Ohio University. Center for Geotechnical and Environmental ResearchOhio. Dept. of TransportationUnited States. Federal Highway AdministrationNTL-HIGHWAY/ROAD TRANSPORTATION-Construction and MaintenanceNTL-HIGHWAY/ROAD TRANSPORTATION-MaterialsNTL-HIGHWAY/ROAD TRANSPORTATION-Pavement Management and PerformanceUS Transportation CollectionThe economic burden associated with repairing and maintaining existing highway pavements is rapidly consuming an increasingly significant portion of the annual transportation budget. One of the major areas of concern is the repair of rigid pavements resulting from premature distress at transverse contraction joints. The performance of Portland cement concrete joints in transferring traffic loads to adjacent slabs is influenced by several factors, including temperature and moisture distributions within the slabs, physical properties of the base and subgrade underlying the pavement, moisture content of the subgrade, and the type, size and spacing of dowel bars. Finite element methods have been used with some success in analyzing concrete pavement systems containing joints and cracks. The accuracy of these methods, however, depends upon how realistically the properties of the concrete and subgrade, the dowel concrete interaction, and traffic loading can be modeled. These procedures must then be verified and calibrated with data obtained on in-service pavements. To date, stresses induced in dowel bars and concrete slabs from environmental cycling and dynamic loading have not been determined in the field