Rigid Pavement Design According to the New AASHTO M-E PDG Analysis: Engineering Properties of Florida Concrete Mixes For Implementing the AASHTO Recommended Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide

Three typical Florida pavement PCC mix designs have been evaluated. Attributed to the proportion of constituent, the mix designs demonstrated distinctive results for all engineering properties. It was shown that the thermal behavior increases rapidly within the first week and stabilizes subsequently. After 28 days, the CTE swell was considered insignificant. Based on the results, nine JPCP models were generated to analyze the mixtures by means of the new M-E PDG. The pavement structures were evaluated based on the predicted distresses and smoothness. It was found that cracking is the critical performance criterion for Florida JPCP according to M-E PDG. Moreover, top-down fatigue damage was isolated to be the controlling failure mechanism. A sensitivity matrix was developed to account for PCC¿s thermal behavior as a control variable. Despite wide-ranging PCC, CTE, and thickness parameters, clear resemblances were exposed for all scenarios under evaluation and distinctive performance envelopes arose. It was verified that the new M-E PDG is minimally CTE sensitive to faulting, CTE sensitive to bottom-up damage, and extremely CTE sensitive to top-down damage, cracking, and smoothness.