Skid resistance and surface water drainage performance of engineered cementitious composites for pavement applications

Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) is a unique class of the high performance fiber-reinforced cement-based material showing extreme tensile ductility of several percent. Few studies have reported potential use of ECC for rigid pavement applications. The critical shortcoming of ECC for roadway application is on the surface texture. ECC lacks coarse aggregates, which leads to low skid resistance and surface drainage. In this study, corundum is first incorporated as fine aggregates into ECC mix (ECC-Cor) to improve the surface micro-texture. The resulting ECC-Cor possesses satisfactory mechanical performance and high skid resistance (BPN > 70). ECC-Cor also shows good durability and the micro-textures can last for more than 100,000 load cycles. While the addition of corundum significantly enhances the micro-texture and skid resistance, improvement on macro-texture and surface drainage is marginal. Further surface treatment with grooves successfully improves the functional performance, not only by minimizing the risk of hydroplaning (water outflow time < 4 s) but also by improving the skid resistance (BPN > 90). An empirical model, which correlates water drainage to macro-texture and pavement geometries of ECC, is proposed.