Evaluation of roller compacted concrete for its application as high traffic resisting pavements with fatigue analysis

Roller compacted concrete is a special kind of concrete developed for dams and low-volume traffic pavements, such as yards, lots, storage areas, etc., with the aim of easy compaction under rolling loads without requiring formworks. Roller compacted concrete is primarily used for low-volume traffic pavements as it has limited cement content which reduces cohesion, affecting its fatigue, abrasion and shrinkage resistance. Testing RCC is also quite difficult as beams and molds have to be extracted from slab specimens, thereby limiting the studies aimed at fatigue analysis which require many samples. This study aims to develop a heavy-loaded high-volume traffic-resisting Roller compacted concrete by altering the mix design of pavement quality concrete evaluating its mechanical properties, abrasion, and shrinkage strains alongside analyzing the microstructure. Also, the fatigue life of Roller compacted concrete has been compared with pavement quality concrete using normal distribution and different Weibull distribution methods and analyzed using a plate load test. The results showed that mix RCC7 (Cement: Fine aggregate: Coarse aggregate: Water = 406.8: 892.8: 863.6: 127.5 kg/m(3)) achieved a compressive strength, split tensile strength, flexural strength, and percent abrasion loss of 43.86 MPa, 4.67 MPa, 4.92 MPa, and 11.7%, respectively at 28 days. Also, shrinkage strains were nearly 31% lesser than pavement quality concrete. Fatigue results and stress variation profile from plate load test prove that Roller compacted concrete having 13% cement also has better stress absorption capability even if it lacks good stress distribution and can be used as a pavement slab for medium-heavy loaded high-volume traffic- resisting pavements such as state highways.