AI Representation: A clean, smooth concrete pavement section contrasts with heavily rutted asphalt along a road framed by scenic Alaskan mountains and spruce trees. Image credits: Chatgpt
Department of Transportation’s ROSAP repository with a December 24, 2017 date and it describes the research as beginning with laboratory wheel tracker and freeze-thaw testing, followed by a small experimental cast-in-place panel trial. The precast panels for the Abbott Road project were designed, built and installed in summer 2017. it is known for cracking due to changing temperatures While concrete does not change its shape.
To compensate for it, the Alaskan researchers introduced short steel fibers.
The ROSAP study says the Abbott Road installation was meant to test at full scale, on a high-traffic urban arterial road, what the laboratory and campus results had suggested about rutting, freeze-thaw durability, construction process and life cycle cost. The study also says the panels would be monitored to determine whether SFRRC could be used on roadways. This issue has always been present in Anchorage and local engineers have been studying for a long time what surface material could withstand the stress at the intersection point and other high-traffic areas. Rubber, used together with concrete, makes it more elastic, but decreases some of its mechanical properties. Such material was studied in the laboratory and on the real road and the results of both experiments are presented in this paper. Laboratory and cast-in-place results that preceded the road test The first study, Use of Steel Fiber-Reinforced Rubberized Concrete in Cold Regions , appears in the U.S. The abstract reports that wheel tracker tests showed much lower rutting for SFRRC than for asphalt and that freeze-thaw testing showed less cracking and strength reduction than for Portland cement concrete. The team ran these laboratory tests at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where an experimental cast-in-place panel then showed little wear under traffic, a result that informed the design of the pre-cast panels for Abbott Road.
The research section of the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities website hosts this second report, which contains the practical field evaluation of the SFRRC. The Phase II report compared the SFRRC sections with adjoining hot mix asphalt sections. The main findings of the summary were that SFRRC road surfaces had considerable rutting resistance when compared to the adjoining asphalt samples.
The freeze-thaw results were stated in the same part, which was also tested against the lab results from the earlier cited test.
The December 2017 study covers the laboratory and cast-in-place work and the Abbott Road plan; the Phase II report documents the field comparison findings; and the broader program, scheduled to run through December 31, 2020, was set out separately. This listing has a start date of January 1, 2017 and an end date of December 31, 2020. A project listing at the National Concrete Pavement Technology Center describes an experimental feature evaluation of the SFRRC installed on Abbott Road, sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration and led by researcher Carolyn Morehouse. In addition, it states that data will be collected for three years following construction for material wear, operation and pavement conditions, with comparisons from control sites.
