Mechanical response of fiber reinforced concrete overlays over asphalt concrete substrate: Experimental results and numerical simulation

ISLA, F.; LUCCIONI, B.; RUANO, G.; TORRIJOS, M.C.; MOREA, F.; GIACCIO, G.; ZERBINO, R.

CONSTRUCTION AND BUILDING MATERIALS

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2015 vol. 93 p. 1022 - 1033

0950-0618

Fiberreinforced concrete overlays are nowadays an alternative for repairing andreinforcing pavements. The contribution of concrete overlays strongly dependson the bond with the substrate. The fibers help sewing contraction joints andeventual cracks and, in this way prevent the propagation of cracks along thesubstrate?overlay interface. Therefore, the addition of fibers to the overlayallows reducing repair thickness, increasing service life and improvingpavements general performance. Some experimental tests performed for thedevelopment of a method to assess different fibers efficiency in this type ofapplications are presented in this paper. Substrate?overlay composite beams aretested under flexure. The beams consist of overlays of plain and fiber reinforcedconcretes, containing steel and macro-synthetic fibers, applied over an asphaltconcrete substrate. The numerical simulation of the beams is also included inthe paper. Fiber reinforced concrete is considered as a composite material madeof a concrete matrix and fibers and its mechanical behavior is modeled with asimple homogenization approach based on modified mixture theory. The numericalsimulation can accurately reproduce material characterization tests and predictthe bearing capacity of the composite beams. Furthermore, othersubstrate/overlay alternatives are numerically studied. The numerical resultscould be useful to improve the design of these intervention techniques.