01045571

Component

Compressive strength of concrete is one of the important parameters in quality assurance of a new concrete pavement and also in the evaluation of existing concrete pavements. A reliable in-place test technique for the assessment of concrete strength is required for both quality assurance of new concrete pavements and structural-integrity assessment of existing pavements. In this paper, a reliable and practical procedure is proposed to evaluate strength variation of concrete pavements with depth. The proposed procedure first evaluates shear-wave velocity profile of a pavement by a new seismic method called the resonance search (RS) technique and then converts the shear-wave velocity profile to strength profile, using the relationship between shear-wave velocity and compressive strength. The proposed procedure has two significances in methodology: the use of shear waves and the refined determination of pavement thickness. Unlike compression waves, shear waves are not influenced by mode conversion, confinement effects and dimension ratio effects which induce the change of propagation velocity. Also the proposed procedure is powered with the RS technique to determine pavement thickness. The RS technique, based on forward modeling of wave propagation, improves accuracy in thickness evaluation significantly. Field applications were made at airport apron and two express highways to prove reliability and feasibility of the proposed procedure. In the field applications, the relationships between shear-wave velocity and compressive strength were established from drilled cores. Using the site-specific relationship, compressive strengths of other sections could be estimated from shear-wave velocities evaluated by the RS technique.

01042056

07-1406

English

20p

2007

Transportation Research Board 86th Annual Meeting

CD-ROM

Figures; Photos; References (22)

Compressive strength; Concrete pavements; Nondestructive tests; Pavement design; Pavement distress; Pavement performance; Pavements; Resonance; Resonance frequency

In-place; Shear wave velocity profiles; Structural integrity

Design; Highways; Materials; Pavements; I22: Design of Pavements, Railways and Guideways; I32: Concrete

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2007 Paper #07-1406

PRP, TRIS, TRB

Feb 8 2007 6:00PM