Feasibility of Using Nondestructive Testing (NDT) in Roller Compacted Concrete Quality Assessment

Abstract

Roller compacted concrete is a no slump, heavy duty concrete usually used in pavement constructed of roadway, parking lots, in areas of frozen environment or aired region where there is shortage of water for curing, and when other paving alternatives do not satisfy the pavement design requirements regarding heavy loading, and nonstandard wheel configuration. The traditional testing e slab samples have been prepared in the laboratory using two types of coarse aggregates (crushed and rounded), two types of fine aggregates (natural and silica sand), and two types of cement (ordinary and sulfate resistance cement). Beams of (70x100x380 mm), cubes of (100 mm rib length), and cores of (100 mm height and 762 mm diameter) specimen have procedures for quality control or quality assurance may not be the best suitable method due to its time and labor consumption. Implementation of nondestructive testing could be a reasonable alternative. In this work, roller compacted concrete been sawed and obtained from the fabricated, roller compacted slab samples after 28 days of curing. Such specimens were subjected to NDT using both of pulse velocity by Pundit, and of the Schmidt hammer rebound test. The specimens were then subjected physical properties determination. Cube specimens were subjected to compressive strength test, the core specimens were subjected to the split tensile test, while the beam specimens were tested for flexure properties. Data were analyzed, and mathematical correlations of the properties between destructive and nondestructive testing procedures were obtained. It was concluded that both of Pundit pulse velocity and Schmidt hammer rebound values are good predictors of roller compacted concrete quality with high coefficient of determination. The pulse velocity was able to predict (95, 92 and 70) percentage of compressive, flexure and split tensile strength respectively. On the other hand, the Schmidt hammer rebound value was able to predict (81, 91 and 87) percentage of compressive, flexure and split tensile strength respectively.