Shrinkage Behaviour of Steel-Fibre-Reinforced-Concrete Pavements

The use of steel fibres extracted from waste tyres as reinforcement for concrete pavements has been developed at the University of Sheffield. The EU funded EcoLanes Project (Economical and sustainable pavement infrastructure for surface transport) undertook extensive research and developed solutions for Steel-Fibre-Reinforced-Concrete (SFRC) pavements with a particular focus on using recycled steel fibres and roller compacted concrete. The current research project ran alongside the EcoLanes project and aimed at contributing towards the development of design guidelines for pavements reinforced with recycled steel fibres. It was achieved through a study on the restrained shrinkage behaviour of Recycled-Steel-Fibre-Reinforced-Roller-Compacted-Concrete (R-SFR-RCC) pavements, and its consequent effect on the load bearing capacity and fatigue performance of pavements. The work in this thesis is mainly based on numerical investigations, but experiments were carried out to obtain the material properties (moisture transport, free shrinkage and mechanical). These basic physical properties were extracted from test results, using inverse analysis. The extent of distress induced by drying shrinkage was evaluated using moisture transport analysis coupled with stress analysis. The effect of shrinkage distress on the load bearing capacity of the pavement was investigated in a comparative way with and without shrinkage. Fatigue test results were also used to study the long-term load-bearing capacity. It was found that the rate of drying and consequent moisture diffusivity in SFRC is higher than for plain concrete and in RCC it is higher than for CC. Moisture diffusivity varies in the range of 0-5 mm2/day for moisture contents lower than 87-92% and then sharply increases to 30 mm2/day for saturated concrete. Free shrinkage is lower for SFRC compared with plain concrete, at early ages. RCC free shrinkage develops at a more uniform rate compared to CC. For the studied SFR-RCC pavement, surface micro-cracks are formed predominantly due to curling (with opening density of 0.69 mm/m) potentially forming micro-cracks (0.014 mm-0.056 mm width) spaced at 20 mm-60 mm. Cracking at the top surface initiates from the beginning of drying, and stabilises after 180 days. Shrinkage cracking penetrates down to around a quarter of the slab thickness, and the tensile strength at the top surface reduces 50% of the maximum strength; whereas based on the Concrete Society TR34, the strength reduces by 30% at the surface and drops linearly to zero at half depth. The current study found that the stress induced by curling is dominant, compared to that induced by external restraints. Shrinkage induced cracks was found to reduce the ultimate load bearing capacity and the fatigue capacity of the pavement by up to 50%.