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Publication Details

TechBrief: Use of Magnetic Tomography Technology to Evaluate Dowel Bar Placement General Interest: provides practical guidance to engineers responsible for the day-to-day design, construction, rehabilitation, maintenance, and management of pavements.

Primary Topic: Pavement Construction

Description: This technical brief describes a project to evaluate the effectiveness and limitation of MIT Scan-2. The use of properly sized dowel bars has been a long-standing recommendation for jointed concrete pavements subject to heavy truck traffic to prevent roughness caused by faulting. Implicit in this recommendation is the assumption that the dowel bars will be placed in proper position and alignment. Misaligned dowel bars can cause joints to lock, which, in turn, can lead to spalling or cracking. Severe misalignment can also cause looseness around the dowel bars, greatly reducing their effectiveness. Proper centering of the dowel bars under the joint is important to provide adequate embedment length on either side of the joint.The full report is available as FHWA-IF-06-006.

FHWA Publication Number: FHWA-IF-06-002

Publication Year: 2005

Document Links: PDF (file size: 0.3 mb)



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Updated: 04/11/2022
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