Economic and Weibull Analysis of High Performance Concrete Pavements

Abstract

This paper examines the 60-year design philosophy, specifications, and institutional maintenance and repair strategies for Minnesota’s high performance concrete pavements in the first 15 years of service life. It catalogues various modifications and improvements made to the specification since the inception of the concept. It performs a life-cycle cost analysis on the original segment and an incremental benefit cost analysis. Results indicated that the high performance concrete option had the lowest Net Present Cost of investment in comparison to other competing options thus validating the 2001 choice of the high performance concrete pavement over whitetopping, bituminous pavement and do-nothing options. In a conservative approach, Waddoli Weibull analysis of Mean- Time-Between-Maintenance-Activities (MTBMA) of more than 200 concrete test sections in the network indicated that most of the sections exhibited random failure modes in the first three rehabilitation/ maintenance intervals but showed end of life ("wear-out") failure mode after the fourth rehabilitation / maintenance. Consequently, the process also facilitated the determination of optimal intervals for the four interventions within the agency-instituted 50 year analysis period.