Currently, most concrete pavement thickness design procedures do not consider curling stress in fatigue analysis, but many researchers indicate that it should be considered to warrant a zero-maintenance thickness design. Thus, a review of the most widely-adopted PCA design procedure was conducted and concise modification recommendations were provided. Based on Westergaard's edge stress solution and several prediction models for stress adjustments for a variety of loading and environmental (i.e., thermal curling) conditions, a modified PCA equivalent stress analysis and thickness design procedure was proposed and implemented in a highly user-friendly, window-based TKUPAV program for practical trial applications. The proposed approach has been further verified by reproducing very close results to the equivalent stresses and fatigue damages using PCAPAV program, Microsoft EXCEL spreadsheets, and the TKUPAV program. The possible detrimental effect of loading plus day-time curling has also been illustrated in a case study, indicating that the effect of thermal curling should be considered in zero-maintenance design of concrete pavements. (A)
Abstract