Best Practices for Concrete Pavement Transition Design and Construction (0-5320-1)

This project involves most types of transitions that consist of a variety of joint combinations and slab configurations. In many instances, the performance of the transition areas may become the focal area for maintenance due to improper design or construction that otherwise could have been avoided. Districts regularly designing and constructing concrete pavements have developed standards and practices for some transitions and have learned from experience what the best practices are. However, these practices are not yet established for districts interested in building more concrete pavements. In this regard, information is needed to address the different types of issues that arise in everyday design that in many cases depend on the support conditions, slab geometries, aggregate type, weather, and the traffic levels expected over the service life. This project conducted a survey of Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and other state highway association (SHA) practices and identified the best practices toward incorporating them into guidelines for design and construction of transition areas that will enable TxDOT engineers and designers to avoid the inappropriate practices. The types of transitions that were addressed in this report covered a variety of concrete pavement combinations. Where possible, observed performances were documented based on survey results of many district practices and the findings of field visits. Based on these findings, improvements of various transition types were s Guidelines address the design of concrete pavements in transition areas with the joints and related details. The study of specific joint configurations associated with transitions was conducted with respect to stiffness of the joint, potential for permanent deformation, and slab restraint to translational movement at the joint. The 11 most frequently constructed types of concrete pavement transitions are introduced in this paper, and some of them have altemative designs as more options in the design guide. The promising design improvement concepts provide a complete picture of the requirement for the design of a pavement transition for a variety of pavement types and terminal configurations.