Thermal stress caused by temperature distribution in pavement slab is important in the structural design of airport concrete pavements. Airport concrete pavement slab is very thick, therefore, temperature in the pavement slab varies nonlinearly throughout the slab depth. Thermal stress caused by the nonlinear temperature distribution would be different from that of linear temperature distribution. In this research, following issues were investigated to evaluate the thermal stress in concrete pavement. Thermal stress caused by nonlinear temperature distribution was calculated using temperatures and restraint strains measured in an experimental concrete pavement with a 46cm thick slab. Temperature distributions in various thick concrete slabs were computed by solving the heat transfer equation with the control volume method. Thermal stress analysis was carried out to compute the nonlinear temperature distribution in concrete pavements using 3DFEM and the effects of the slab thickness and nonlinear temperature distributionon the thermal stress was discussed.
Abstract