ABSTRACT
The described method assumes that superposition of the reduced contribution of the wheel load (determined from the slab shear tests) over the effective width with the uniformly distributed traffic loads and the dead loads can be applied. To study this hypothesis, a series of slabs is subjected to a combination of a line load, resulting in 50% of the ultimate shear stress found as an average from BS1 and BS3, and a concentrated load. If the principle of superposition holds true, then the shear stress (calculated over beff2) of the experiment with a concentrated load only, τtot,cl, should be similar to the sum of the shear stress due to the loads which act over the full width b (line load, dead load and vertical prestressing load), τline, with the shear stress due to the concentrated load acting over beff2, τconc. The first results seem to confirm the hypothesis of the superposition of a reduced concentrated load with a line load.
