Life cycle analysis of pavement overlays made with Engineered Cementitious Composites

Abstract While unbonded concrete and hot mixture asphalt overlays have been commonly used for concrete pavement rehabilitation, cracking due to stress concentration still limits the service life of pavement overlays. The use of ductile concrete such as Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) should suppress this brittle fracture at the base of the overlay due to existing crack/joint. Therefore, enhancement of long term performance of the overlaid pavements can be expected. Herein we introduce and study the feasibility of this concept via integration of ECC flexural fatigue behavior and finite element analysis for overlaid pavement. The integration results in a service life model for pavement overlays, which was then employed in a life cycle assessment model to reveal the sustainability performance of different overlays. Analysis results suggest that ECC can greatly extend the service life of pavement overlay with less thickness compared with concrete overlay, resulting in a more sustainable overlay.