Better Concrete Mixes for Rapid Repair in Wisconsin

Project Details
STATE

WI

SOURCE

TRID

START DATE

11/25/14

END DATE

05/31/17

RESEARCHERS

Steven M. Cramer, Le T. Pham, Mark B. Snyder

SPONSORS

Wisconsin Department of Transportation

KEYWORDS

Concrete pavements, Costs, Freeze thaw durability, Inventory, Materials, Mix design, Pavement maintenance, Pavement performance, Procedures, Specifications, Time dependence

Project description

Concrete pavements in Wisconsin have shown varying signs of deterioration due to age, environment, loading and other detrimental factors. Considering the enormous cost and effort required to remedy pavement deficiencies, it is crucial that a concerted effort be made to develop and implement practical, effective and economical methods and specifications for more durable concrete mixes for rapid repair. Due to high user delay costs for closing highways for repairs, very short closure periods are specified, requiring concrete that has a high strength gain and very fast cure times. Often times, this work needs to be done in the window of a single night closure. Due to the repair techniques used, concrete used in rapid repairs have been found to have unsatisfactory durability and performance resulting in reduced service lives. As a result, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) is pursuing a research study of concrete materials and mix designs in order to achieve rapid repairs of concrete pavements that meet expected performance and service lives. The research objectives are to evaluate current practice in rapid repair of concrete pavements in Wisconsin and to recommend changes where appropriate. Four major deliverables will be provided: (1) A basic inventory of current materials, concrete mixes and procedures for rapid repair being used by WisDOT and other highway agencies; (2) Identification of high quality performing concrete rapid repair mixes that are capable of providing long life and good performance in a wet freeze-thaw climate typical for Wisconsin; (3) A field review and performance analysis on recent Wisconsin rapid repair projects to evaluate how repairs are performing; and (4) A categorization of technologies and methods available for installation, guidance for mix design and placement, and cost estimates on the concrete mixes being evaluated for rapid repair.
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