Most of the expressway concrete pavements in Korea have been constructed with jointed plain concrete pavements. However, the premature failure of joints occurred on some routes and it is considered to be related to the durability of concrete. Korea Expressway Corporation has been continuously devoting efforts to increase the durability of concrete, and recent research has shown that premature failure of jointed plain concrete pavement constructed recently has decreased. The durability of pavement concrete is determined by internal and external factors. Currently, the durability of pavements concrete is controlled by controlling the quantity and the spacing factor of internal air. In this study, the feasibility of evaluating concrete durability through absorption performance tests was examined. The absorption performance was evaluated by applying ASTM C 1585 and modified NBN B 15-215 in Belgium and applied to the pavement concrete mixed in the laboratory or collected on site. Each test is a method to evaluate water absorption performance, but ASTM evaluates the absorption performance through the upper surface and NBN evaluates the absorption performance through the entire surface of specimens. In this study, the absorption performance of the pavement concrete measured according to the test method was compared and the advantages and disadvantages of the performance evaluation method were examined through comparison of test results and procedures. As a result of the absorption performance test on the cores collected at the site, the amount of water absorption in the region where the few premature failure was occurred was relatively small. Also, the specimen of lower water cement ratio absorbed the smaller amount of water. And the small amount of aggregate at the surface showed tendency of the large absorption of the water. The amount of absorption due to the increment of air content showed a moderate increment but it was relatively small. This study has confirmed the possibility of estimating the durability through the evaluation of the absorption performance of concrete. However, further study is needed to extend the results obtained from the test method to the evaluation criteria of pavement concrete.

Domestic continuously reinforced concrete pavement has been built on a large scale on the Jungbu Expressway, which opened in 1987. Since then, there have been few application due to cost and construction difficulty. Currently, most of the expressway concrete pavements have been applied with jointed plain concrete pavement, but the interest in continuously reinforced concrete pavement has been increasing recently due to frequent premature failure in joints of JPCP. Accordingly, Korea Expressway Corporation has established design guidelines and details for continuously reinforced concrete pavements for expressway in 2014, based on the design method applied to the Jungbu Expressway, but incorporating foreign useful design methods. In terms of construction, pilot constructions were performed on Pyeongtaek~Jecheon Expressway Construction. The new design guidelines were applied to some sections of the Sangju~Yeongdeok Expressway Construction Project in 2016. This study conducted a survey and analysis of transverse cracks for one year after continuously reinforced concrete pavement construction in Sangju~Yeongdeok Expressway. This route was constructed with pavement thickness, base layer and longitudinal reinforcement according to domestic design guidelines. However, the transverse reinforcement was arranged differently according to the section. After construction, the transverse crack spacing was surveyed and the crack gauges were installed at the crack position to measure the movement. This compares the crack spacing according to the characteristics of longitudinal reinforcement and observes continuous movement of the crack width. The results showed that the crack spacing was more affected by the climate at the time of construction than the arrangement method of the transverse reinforcement. The crack width showed periodic changes according to the temperature change over 24 hours. However, due to seasonal changes, it showed a tendency of gradual increasing or decreasing in crack widths, and it was predicted that different measurement results will be shown depending on the time of crack width measurement. Generally, it is predicted that the crack spacing will be narrowed and the crack movement will tend to converge with the period after construction. This initial crack movement data is expected to be useful for comparing whether these predictions are valid.