PREDICTION OF FAULTING OF JOINTS IN CONCRETE PAVEMENTS

The Portland Cement Association, in 1984, published "Thickness Design for Concrete Highway and Street Pavements," introducing for the first time in any thickness design procedure the concept of pavement component erosion. The erosion criteria were added to the traditional concrete flexural fatigue criteria because heavy-axle loads cause deflections at slab corners and edges, which cause pumping, erosion of the subgrade, subbase, and shoulder materials, voids under and adjacent to the slab, and faulting of the pavement joints. The erosion criteria correlated well to all of the in-service performance data available at the time. These criteria were viewed as first-generation general guidelines that could be refined as field performance data became available on specific climatic and drainage conditions. The aim of this study was to collect performance data that has become available since 1984, and refine the existing erosion criteria to represent different climatic areas and drainage conditions.