Experimental and numerical study of road-bridge link slabs in fully jointless bridges using rubberized engineered cementitious composites (R-ECC)

This paper presents a different way using crumb rubber and fine sand totally replaced for silica sand within ECC mixtures to make rubberized engineered cementitious composites (R-ECC) to solve the issues of high construction cost of the road-bridge link slab for fully jointless bridges (FJBs). The crumb rubber with a size of 80 CR was replaced with fine sand from a volume rate of 5% to 20% in multiples of 5% to prepare the R-ECC material. Five different R-ECC mixtures (CR0-CR20) with different mix designs were prepared and tested, then an optimum mix proportion for the R-ECC mixtures was found. An R-ECC road-bridge link slab made of the optimum mix proportion which replace with fine sand in a volume rate of 15% was constructed, and its absorptive deformation capacity, tensile performance, and crack distribution under the most unfavourable load (temperature drop load) were studied. It is found that the R-ECC slab has good absorptive deformation capacity, crack control capacity and better internal force distribution. Therefore, R-ECC mixtures can be utilized for road-bridge link slab construction. Then, a sensitivity finite element comparative analysis was carried out considering the content of crumb rubbers, the friction coefficient and the slab length. It is found that the design length has a greater influence on the tensile performance of the R-ECC slab than other factors. Finally, a preliminary design theory of road-bridge link slab for FJBs has been established.