Hybrid Concrete Material to be Tested by UTA

Brief 

A team led by Ali Abolmaali, a civil engineering professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, will test the operational, structural and material performance of synthetic fiber-reinforced concrete pavement with steel-reinforced concrete pavement and asphalt concrete pavement systems. The team will use spectroscopic technologies to discern material properties along with an AI model to predict the service life of the roads.

Insight

A University of Texas at Arlington civil engineering professor is leading a $949,000 project with the city of Dallas to evaluate its roads and determine remaining service life.

Ali Abolmaali, chair of the Civil Engineering Department and the Tseng Huang Endowed Professor of structural and applied mechanics, said he and his team will evaluate three test pavement strips in the city of Dallas.

“We’ll take core samples to evaluate the performance of synthetic-fiber-reinforced concrete pavement with steel-reinforced concrete pavement and asphalt concrete pavement systems,” Abolmaali said.

The Center for Structural Engineering Research/Simulation and Pipeline Inspection at UTA has developed a new sustainable concrete composite, known as SYN-FRC, that uses synthetic fiber to reinforce the concrete. It’s highly durable and can resist environmental deterioration for decades.

In addition to its durability, Abolmaali said, the composite has shown a very good load-bearing capacity and can be used as an alternative to steel-reinforced concrete.

In this project, a combination of asphalt concrete, SYN-FRC, steel-reinforced concrete and hybrid pavement slabs will be put together in a chessboard pattern, and their operational, structural and material behavior will be monitored for three years.

“We’re hoping this project will yield the city of Dallas a pioneering and cost-effective pavement system for longer service life and with less repair, rehabilitation and traffic interruption,” Abolmaali said.

Ali Hatefi, interim director of the Public Works Department for the city of Dallas, said: “We are very excited about this new initiative that allows the city to explore other alternative material for the pavement of our roadway system that is both more durable and sustainable as compared to the conventional steel-reinforced concrete.