PURPOSES : Pavement growth (PG) of concrete pavement has been recognized as a major concern to highway and airport engineers as well as to road users for many years. PG is caused by the pressure generation in the concrete pavement as a result of a rise of the concrete temperature and moisture. PG could result in concrete pavement blowup and damage the adjacent or the nearby structures such as bridge structures. The amount of the PG is affected by the complicated interactions of numerous factors such as climatic condition, amounts of incompressible particles (IP) infiltration into the joints, pavement structure, and materials. Trigger temperature for pavement growth (TTPG) is defined as the concrete temperature when all transverse cracks or joints within the expansion joints completely close and generating a pressure in the pavement section. It is one of the most critical parameters to evaluate the potential of PG occurring in the pavement. Unfortunately, there are no available methods or guidelines for estimating TTPG. Therefore, this study aims to provide a methodology to predict TTPG of a concrete pavement section. METHODS : In this study, a method to evaluate the TTPG and its influencing factors using the field measured data of concrete pavement expansions is proposed. The data of the concrete pavement expansions obtained from the long-term monitoring of three concrete pavement sections, which are I-70, I-70N, and Md.458, in Maryland of United Stated, were used. The AASHTO equation to estimate the joint movement in concrete pavement was used and modified for the back-calculation of the TTPG value. A series of the analytical and numerical solutions presented in the literatures were utilized to predict the friction coefficient between the concrete slab-base and to estimate the maximum concrete temperature of these three pavement sections. RESULTS : The estimated maximum concrete temperature of these three pavement sections yearly exhibited relatively constant values, which range from 40 to 45 °C. The results of the back-calculation revealed that the TTPG of the I-70 and Md.58 sections decreased with time. However, the TTPG of the I-70N section tended to be relatively constant from the first year of the pavement age. CONCLUSIONS : The estimation of the TTPG for the three concrete pavement sections showed that the values of the TTPG gradually decreased although the yearly maximum concrete pavement temperature did not change significantly.