Modelling the effect of plastic sheet curing on early age temperature development in concrete pavement

ABSTRACT

Prediction of the temperature development at an early age is a good starting point to assess the development of the restrained thermal stress and thermal cracking in rigid pavements. This paper presents a numerical early age concrete pavement temperature prediction model. It enables to evaluate the effect of various paving conditions, such as paving time, curing method, air temperature, wind speed, and the concrete placement temperature, on the early age concrete pavement performance. A critical review of current heat flux models at the pavement surface covered with a plastic sheet is presented. An extension of existing models to quantify the effect of the plastic sheet curing method is introduced, based on the energy balance method. The numerical implementation procedure for the proposed temperature prediction model is solved by the finite difference method. The temperature prediction model was verified with field measured data of two test sections. The predicted temperature shows a satisfying match with field measured data. Lastly, the effect of plastic sheet curing and its duration on the development of the pavement temperature was analysed by the proposed theoretical model.

KEYWORDS:

• Temperature prediction
• plastic sheet curing
• early age
• concrete pavement

Acknowledgements

The assistance received from Federation of the Belgian Cement Industry (FEBELCEM) and Flemish Ministry for Mobility and Public Works is greatly appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors appreciate the support the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 51608457] and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number 2682016CX011].