Material Optimisation and Large-Scale Investigations of Precast Concrete Slabs

Due to increasing traffic numbers, especially heavy goods vehicles and higher global temperatures, the road infrastructure requires more and longer maintenance measures, leading to longer non-availabilities for the road users. In the research project "HESTER" (hybrid retrofitting system for maintaining roads including the usage of novel materials), a precast concrete pavement was developed which aims for an economical and durable construction in the shortest time possible. Particularly in heavy load areas like bus stops, this approach is an extremely innovative and promising option for solving the before-mentioned problem. As part of the cooperative research project, the chair of pavement engineering at the TU Dresden and its partners investigated different ways to modify conventional concrete recipes for pavements in a first step with the aim of creating a high performance concrete that withstands higher traffic and climatic loading. For this purpose, hollow polymer microspheres and short fibre reinforcements were used. In a second step, precast concrete slabs consisting out of the most suitable and classified material were produced and investigated under realistic conditions in a large-scale test stand. Four precast slabs, bedded on a silica-resin material and having four different jointing systems respectively, enabled the examination of eight systems under high cyclic loading.