Experimental study of the effect of reinforcement ratio on deflection of rigid pavement.

Rigid pavement is a concrete pavement construction. This concrete pavement has a high level of stiffness when compared to asphalt pavement (flexible pavement). Deflection behaviour in rigid pavement needs to be considered because if the quality of the concrete, the thickness of the slab and the amount of reinforcement in the concrete are not calculated properly, it will result in a large deflection that can cause slab cracks, pumping and faulting in the pavement. This study aims to determine the behaviour and magnitude of the deflection on the rigid pavement with several variations in reinforcement ratio that gets a monotonic static line load experimentally. This study uses a concrete slab measuring 2 m x 0.6 m x 0.2 m placed on the soil with a CBR value of 6% as support. The variation of reinforcement ratio is ρ =0.004; ρ=0.007; ρ =0.01; ρ =0.02. Concrete quality fc 30 Mpa, steel quality fy 580 Mpa. The results obtained are the deflection (δ) on the rigid pavement is affected by reinforcement ratio (ρ). At the same load, the greater the reinforcement ratio (ρ), the smaller the deflection of rigid pavement. The biggest deflection occurs in the rigid pavement with ρ=0.004, load 210 KN, and stress 625 Mpa, which is 10.12 mm. The deflection of rigid pavement as a result of the experiment with variations in reinforcement ratio (ρ) is approximated by the formula δ=-61.053ρ+5.3829 for P=100 KN and δ=-98.014ρ+9.7821 for P=200 KN. Judging from the magnitude of the stress (fs), at the same deflection, the greater the reinforcement ratio, the smaller the stress that occurs. The tendency of rigid pavement deflection behaviour in terms of the stress value (fs), fs between 0 - 20 Mpa the deflection value increases sharply with a linear equation approach δ=0.2811fs+1.599, and from fs 20 - 220 Mpa the deflection value increases with a gentler slope with the linear equation approach δ=0.0204fs+4.3447. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]