Large-scale airfield concrete slab fatigue tests

Abstract

Large-scale concrete slab tests were conducted in the laboratory to evaluate the effect of multiple wheel gears on the fatigue resistance of concrete slabs. Monotonic and cyclic loading was completed on sixteen fully-supported slabs. The monotonic testing characterized the flexural strength of the concrete slab under the fully-supported conditions relative to the standard simply-supported flexural beam test. The testing program addressed the effects of peak stress ratio, stress range, and stress pulse type on the fatigue resistance of concrete slabs. For low cycle fatigue, stress range was not a significant factor while the applied peak stress controlled the number of repetitions to failure. For high cycle fatigue, peak stress and stress range affected the number of cycles to failure. An S-N curve analyses of the fatigue results showed that the number of repetitions to failure for the tridem pulses was not equivalent to the single pulse repetitions to failure for the same pulse duration, peak stress, and stress range.