Environmental and economic benefits of steel, glass, and polypropylene fiber reinforced cement composite application in jointed plain concrete pavement

Conventional plain concrete (PC) leads to large design thickness when used in applications where high flexural strength is required. Therefore, to minimize the consumption of natural resources and to avoid large design thickness, it is fundamental to upgrade the flexural strength of PC by using supplementary materials i.e. steel rebars, fibers. This study evaluated the environmental and economic performance of the pavements designed with different fibrous concrete composites (FCCs). FCCs were manufactured by incorporating 0.5 and 1.0% volume fractions of glass fiber (GF), hooked steel fiber (HSF), and polypropylene fiber (PPF) in the normal strength concrete (C30). Initially, the flexural properties of FCCs were evaluated and then these properties were utilized to design the thickness of jointed plain concrete pavement (JPCP). Using the cost and carbon emissions per cubic meter of each concrete mix, the environmental and economic performance of JPCP construction was estimated. The performance of different FCCs in the JPCP was compared with that of the conventional PC. The results of mechanical testing showed that HSF-FCC outperforms both PPF-FCC and GF-FCC by a significant margin. Despite inferior mechanical performance compared to HSF-FCC, both PPF-FCC and GF-FCC are very effective in reducing the carbon footprint and cost of JPCP. JPCPs with GF-FCC and PPF-FCC are also ecofriendly and economical than the JPCP with conventional PC for the same load-carrying capacity. Overall, FCC can yield cheaper and eco-friendlier pavements compared to conventional PC if the dosage and type of fiber are correctly chosen as recommended in this study.