ABSTRACT
Concrete pavements are increasingly being used to extend the service life of old flexible pavements (Kannemeyer et al., 2007). As part of the National Highway renewal programme currently in progress in South Africa, full-scale experimental trial sections of Ultra Thin Continuously Reinforced Concrete Pavements (UTCRCP) have been constructed. The UTCRCP can handle high deflections and it is intended for use as an overlay to rehabilitate weakened pavement structures. The design, construction and quality control of the material has proven to be a challenge. Pavement design engineers normally see concrete pavements as rigid pavements that fail in a brittle manner. The un-reinforced concrete pavements with closely spaced movement joints built in the past were rigid brittle structures, but the use of continuously reinforced concrete pavements, has resulted in both a reduction in the volume of concrete required for any given pavement, and a more flexible behaviour of the pavement. Optimization of the concrete mix
The actual behavior and failure of the UTCRCP can only be accurately modeled by taking the postcracked behavior of the reinforced concrete into account, yet the standard tests used to determine the properties of concrete are conducted in load control and only the peak load is recorded.
