Evaluation of long term performance of concrete pavements : comparison of European and North American practices.

The paper describes very systematically the objectives, the working methods and the activities involved in collecting data, preprocessing them, exchanging them with the partners of the University of Illinois with the help of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The first qualitative utilization of the data and the first lessons drawn with regard to the relations between modern constructional arrangements as a whole and the long-term performance of concrete pavements are presented. In connection with the works of the PIARC, the Technical Committee Concrete Roads and thepartnering mentioned above, a more detailed analysis of the results is in progress with a more precise comparison between American observations and observations from the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy and France. The paper provides an overview of this work. (A)