Full-temperature performance characterisation of super tough resin concrete for steel bridge deck paving

ABSTRACT

The severe service environment of steel bridges put forward strict requirements for the deck pavement, especially the flexibility of paving materials. In this study, a new super tough resin-based concrete (STRC) was introduced and a comparative study of STRC and epoxy asphalt concrete (EAC) performance was conducted. Specifically, the high-temperature stability, low- and intermediate-temperature flexibility, fracture resistance, and fatigue properties were characterised by the dynamic creep test, beam bending test, semi-circular bending test, and semi-circular fatigue test, respectively. According to the results, at 70°C, the cumulative strain after 10,000 cycles of loading is about 2700μϵ and 900μϵ for STRC and EAC, respectively. At −10°C, the maximum tensile strain of EAC is only 2419 μϵ, which is significantly lower than that of STRC (17000 μϵ). For the cracking resistance, STRC exhibits larger total fracture energy, pre-peak and post-peak fracture energies, which indicates the excellent cracking resistance of STRC. Furthermore, the fatigue life and accumulated dissipated energy of STRC are higher than that of EAC. Besides, the tensile strain growth rate of EAC is significantly greater than that of STRC, which implies a lower crack propagation rate and better fatigue resistance of STRC.

KEYWORDS:

• Steel bridge deck pavement
• mechanical properties
• semi-circular bending test
• semi-circular fatigue test
• digital image correlation technology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China: [grant no 52078131]; Scientific Research Foundation of the Graduate School of Southeast University: [grant no YBPY2163].