Tensile Performance of SHCC Road-Bridge Link Slabs in Fully Jointless Bridges

Deformation of the main girder is absorbed by a continuously reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP) with microcracks in fully jointless bridges. The conventional fully jointless bridge has been challenged by durability and reliability issues because the CRCP is vulnerable to crack and hard to control the crack width when it suffers temperature variation. In this paper, a new type of fully jointless bridge with the road-bridge link slabs using strain-hardening cementitious composite (SHCC) material is investigated. First, an experiment was carried out to study the material properties of SHCC material for a preliminary assessment of road-bridge link slab performance using this material. Results found that SHCC is adequate for link slabs for its high tensile ductility and fine cracks development. Second, an SHCC slab model tensile test was carried out to study the absorptive capacity and the crack distribution of the SHCC slab. Results verified the high absorptive deformation capacity of the SHCC slabs. When the longitudinal deformation reaches 10 mm, the surface cracks in the SHCC slab are fine and dense, the crack width is kept in 80 μm, and the internal force is small. Third, by comparing the tensile test results with a conventional CRCP slab with same length, it is found that an SHCC slab has higher absorption capacity, better crack distribution, and smaller internal force than a CRCP slab. Finally, through ABAQUS finite element modelling, the stress performance of SHCC road-bridge link slabs is simulated using a trilinear constitutive model. The calculated results are consistent with the experimental results