Innovative Pavement Design Using Fiber-Reinforced Low Carbon CSA Cement

Abstract

Motivation towards reducing the environmental impacts of concrete in the construction industry has spurred increased research on alternative cements. Calcium sulfoaluminate (CSA) cement concretes offer significant gains in sustainability while offering additional advantages in performance. Expansive Type K CSA cement concretes offer mitigation of shrinkage-related cracking and belitic CSA (BCSA) cement concretes benefit accelerated construction due to its rapid-setting behavior. Further enhancements in concrete performance can be gained with fiber reinforcement, particularly by providing post-cracking tensile strength. Additionally, the expansion of a CSA cement concrete in-tandem with the confinement offered by the fiber reinforcement has the potential to induce chemical prestressing, further enhancing performance.This research studies a novel fiber-reinforced belitic CSA (BCSA) cement concrete that exhibits both rapid-setting and expansive behavior aiming to determine its viability for highway pavements. Fatigue tests were conducted on large-scale specimens placed on an elastic foundation with various pavement designs, including with fiber reinforcement. Standard material properties of fiber-reinforced specimens along with creep and expansion were also characterized in this research for comparison with plain specimens. An improvement in fatigue performance was seen in fiber-reinforced BCSA specimens. However, a comparison between plain and fiber-reinforced specimens showed no significant confinement of expansion. Fiber-reinforcement specimens showed a 30% gain in the modulus of elasticity and flexural tests revealed that the fiber-reinforced specimens could withstand 74% of the cracking load after cracking.