USING MATURITY CONCEPTS TO DETERMINE STRENGTH OF RAPID SETTING HYDRAULIC CEMENT CONCRETE

Abstract

One of the perplexing problems faced by highway agencies today is how to rehabilitate or reconstruct aging pavements with a minimal inconvenience to the motoring public. The crowded urban freeway system in California offers an extraordinary challenge. In an effort to minimize user delays, Catrans is using Fast-Setting Hydraulic Cement Concrete (FSHCC) to replace deteriorated portland cement concrete pavement. This paper details the work of the Federal Highway Administration’s Mobile Concrete Laboratory (MCL) during pavement replacement on Interstate 10 near Pomona, California. The objective of the activity was to determine if maturity concepts could be used to predict early strength of FSHCC. Based on this limited investigation, it appears that the maturity method predicts the early age flexural beam strength with a relatively high degree of certainty. Predictions of later age flexural beam strength are less certain. Compressive strength and maturity values correlated well for both early and later ages.