The application and early-age behaviors of continuously reinforced bonded concrete overlay of distressed jointed concrete pavements

Considerable efforts and money are spent to maintain and repair the distressed jointed concrete pavement (JCP) sections by providing partial-/full-depth repair, under sealing, and patching; however, a lot of distresses reoccur frequently. For severe distresses, overlay was constructed on the JCP. Resurfacing with a bonded concrete overlay (BCO) over the existing pavement to form a monolithic structure has proven to be a cost-effective rehabilitation strategy. Continuously reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP) bonded overlay was constructed for the rehabilitation of a 2000 ft long JCP section on U.S.75 in Sherman, Texas, United States which had been subjected to numerous rehabilitations to construct the guidelines of the CRCP bonded overlay. The pavement design and concrete mix design selected are discussed and introduced in this article. In order to reduce the reflective cracking at the location of the JCP joints, geotextile was placed at the joint location before the overlay construction. For the study on the function of the geotextile, the geotextile was not placed at 20 JCP joints for the comparison. One week after the BCO construction, the investigation for the CRCP cracking was carried out at three stages. The investigated results revealed that the cracks at the transverse steel location are much more than those between the transverse steel. Falling weight deflectometer testing was run on the pavement surface before and after the overlay construction to measure the deflection behavior of the pavement. The performance of the overlay shows that the bonded CRCP is appropriate for the JCP resurfacing.