Tailoring of Compaction Parameters of the Vibratory Table and Vibratory Hammer for Roller Compacted Concrete Pavements to Resemble Field Properties

Abstract

Previous studies have indicated that roller compacted concrete pavement may demonstrate significant variations in field behavior compared to laboratory specimens. This discrepancy can be attributed to the dissimilarities in compaction efforts between laboratory and field conditions, wherein the laboratory efforts fail to emulate the field compaction. Thus, in the present study, efforts have been made to optimize the compaction parameters, especially the number of layers of widely employed compaction methods, viz, the vibratory hammer (VH) and vibratory table (VT). A field slab was constructed using a duplex roller to provide a target value for the optimization process. Parameters such as packing density, fresh density, mechanical properties, viz, compressive, split tensile, and flexural strength, and porosity were considered for the tailoring process. Fresh density results showed that VT and VH-compacted specimens with ASTM parameters were loosely (−1.1%) and densely compacted (+5%), respectively, compared with field specimens (FSs). Therefore, to determine the optimal compaction parameters, the number of layers increased to five in the VT method and decreased to one in the VH method. Among different compaction layers, only the specimen fabricated with four layers and one layer in the VT and VH methods, respectively, could closely resemble the fresh, mechanical, and porosity of FSs. In addition, a new compaction procedure for fabricating prismatic specimens is developed for the VH and VT methods based on the compaction energy and packing density approaches.