A STUDY ON THE EFFECT OF FAILURE PROBABILITY OF DESIGN FATIGUE CURVE ON THE RELIABILITY OF CONCRETE PAVEMENT

Abstract

The design fatigue curve for concrete pavement must be considered the probability of failure because the fatigue lives of concrete show a large scatter, and the probability of design fatigue curve has a great influence on the reliability of concrete pavement. But the relationship between the failure probability of design fatigue curve and the reliability of concrete pavement was not cleared therefore there were no realistic guide for the choice of the failure probability of design fatigue curve. In this paper, this relationship was studied by the result of performance survey about the concrete pavement under service period of 25 years.
According to the survey result, the rate of cracked slabs of this concrete pavement was about 30%. On the other hand, the calculation result of fatigue damage of this concrete pavement using the failure probability of 30% fatigue curve was 1.0 for the calculation period of 20 years. This means that this concrete pavement cause the fatigue crack after 20 years service. Consequently, it is appeared that the reliability of concrete pavement can predict by the failure probability of design fatigue curve.
And more, from the flexural fatigue test results of specimens obtained from the survey area, the validity of the Miner's rule for cumulative fatigue damage of concrete was verified.