Flexural fatigue performance of concrete containing nano-particles for pavement

The flexural fatigue performance of concrete containing nano-particles for pavement is experimentally studied. Both nano-TiO2 and nano-SiO2 are respectively employed to be as the additives. For comparison, the flexural fatigue performance of plain concrete and the concrete containing polypropylene (PP) fibers is also experimentally studied in this article. The test results indicate that the fatigue lives of concretes containing nano-particles follow the double-parameter Weibull distribution. The flexural fatigue performance of concretes containing nano-particles is improved significantly and the sensitivity of their fatigue lives to the change of stress is also increased. The theoretic fatigue lives of concretes containing nano-particles are enhanced in different extent. With increasing stress level, the enhanced extent of theoretic fatigue number is increased. The concrete containing nano-TiO2 in the amount of 1% by weight of binder has the best flexural fatigue performance, which is much better than that of the concrete containing PP fibers, which has been extensively used to improve the fatigue performance of concrete in pavement. The theoretic stress level of the concrete containing nano-TiO2 in the amount of 1% by weight of binder is enhanced compared with plain concrete when the fatigue failure number is equal to 10(6). (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.