University of California Pavement Research Center

Over the past 50 years, only several full-scale concrete pavements have been tested, e.g., the AASHO Road Test, Mn/ROAD, and the various US Army Corps of Engineers tests (1). These full-scale test pavements have resulted in essential information for further improvement in pavement design procedures. They have also raised many questions that need to be answered with future road tests. The use of accelerated pavement testing equipment enables full-scale concrete pavements to be constructed and tested more cheaply than road tests. Caltrans currently owns two heavy vehicle simulators (HVS), which have been used to load asphalt concrete pavements at the University of California at Berkeley. The HVS allows for continuous load testing in a controlled environment and the potential for reduced variability in materials and testing. In order to evaluate the future performance of rehabilitated concrete pavements, the second HVS was used to test an accelerated Portland Cement Concrete pavement section constructed at the University of California-Berkeley. The main goals of this accelerated pavement testing was to familiarize the staff with concrete pavement construction, install instrumentation in the slabs, develop a rigid pavement testing procedure using the HVS, and monitor the in-situ instrumentation with loading. All the information and experience gained from this testing would be needed later for instrumentation and HVS testing of six fast setting hydraulic cement concrete (FSHCC) test sections located in Palmdale, CA.