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Publication Details

High Performance Concrete Pavement (Construction Report) General Interest: provides practical guidance to engineers responsible for the day-to-day design, construction, rehabilitation, maintenance, and management of pavements. Research/Reference: useful for researchers doing further work in the pavement area as well as those developing improved testing and design procedures. Includes documents of historical value.

Primary Topic: Pavement Construction

Description: Portland Cement concrete pavements of especially high quality became an area of interest in the early 1990s and precipitated a tour by representatives of industry and government to observe European construction practices. Following the tour the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) developed a research program to encourage and aid states in constructing High Performance Concrete Pavement (HPCP). Important criteria for research projects were service life and costs, innovative design and materials, and construction productivity and quality. This Kansas HPCP research project was facilitated greatly by the FHWA funding and was conceived to address most of the criteria enumerated above.

Specific test sections generally one half to one kilometer in length were built with the following special features and materials: 1) a single saw cuts without sealing the joint, 2) fiberglass dowels, 3) an "X" frame load transfer device, 4) early cut saws, 5) polyolefin fibers, 6) longitudinal tining, 7) high solids curing compound, 8) two-lift construction, 9) recycled asphalt pavement millings as intermediate size aggregate in PCCP in bottom lift, 10) lower water-cement ratio concrete, 11) hard, igneous coarse aggregate in PCCP in top lift with a pozzolan, 12) random transverse tining,

Laboratory testing was done on innovative materials and mixtures. Fatigue testing of the various dowels and load transfer devices was performed. Most materials and test sections performed as expected with the exception that interpanel cracking occurred between the 18.3 meter (60 foot) joints of the polyolefin fiber section. The cost increase for the two-lift construction was significant even though the first lift was placed using only a spreader. Evaluation and monitoring of the test sections were carried out for five years.

FHWA Publication Number: FHWA-KS-98/2

Publication Year: 1998

Document Links: PDF (file size: 7 mb)



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Updated: 04/11/2022
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