Investigation of fracture resistance of roller compacted concrete pavement modified with synthetic fibers

Due to the sudden increase in the price of binder in recent years and the cracking of asphalt pavements, especially in cold areas, major problems with the implementation and operation of asphalt pavement in some parts of the country can be solved with the use of roller compacted concrete pavements. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to investigate the effect of synthetic fibers on fracture resistance of roller compacted concrete pavement in different loading modes (pure mode I, pure mode II and mixed mode). For this purpose, fracture toughness of roller compacted concretes containing 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3% of a synthetic fiber named Forta was evaluated using linear elastic fracture mechanics. The results show that the effects of the fiber percentages on the mixed mode fracture toughness is very significant and adding this fiber more than 0.3% by weight of the mixture does not lead to a significant improvement of the fracture resistance. Also, by transferring from the pure mode I to pure mode II, the resistance of roller compacted concrete pavement modified with synthetic and without fibers is reduced.