An Investigation of Dowel Bar Retrofit Strategies

Abstract

Dowel Bar Retrofit (DBR) offers a great deal of promise as a rehabilitation strategy for undoweled pavements with poor ride quality due to faulting. This paper presents a summary of several investigations intended to provide recommendations for best practice for dowel bar retrofit. The results have some relevance for new dowels in pavements as well. The investigations include two sets of accelerated pavement tests on doweled pavements, one on an old pavement that looked at DBR versus undoweled performance, and the other on a new pavement that looked at 3 versus 4 dowels per wheelpath, and dowel type (epoxy coated steel, fiber reinforced polymer, and hollow stainless steel). Another investigation looked at the corrosion performance of various types of metallic dowels under accelerated laboratory corrosion conditions, and also compared chloride contents in the laboratory tests to chloride contents in pavements in different climate regions.