Evaluation of Pavement Concrete with Low Paste Volume Using Portland Limestone Cement

A high cementitious content in portland cement concrete can cause early cracking of concrete. This study investigated the effects of minimized paste volume in concrete with the effects of portland limestone cement (PLC) and blended aggregates (BA). Based on the laboratory results and numerical modeling, the performance of pavement concrete with different paste volumes was evaluated. The paste volume of concrete could be reduced to 23.7% without affecting its strength and durability as evaluated by rapid chloride penetrability testing (RCPT) and surface resistivity (SR) tests. The paste volume of concrete with the BA technique could be further reduced to 22.6%. When the concrete mixtures were evaluated by using the critical stress analysis, their potential performance was noted to decrease as the paste volume decreased. The concrete mixtures with the BA technique were noted to have better potential performance as a pavement concrete. The concrete using PLC has comparable performance as that of the conventional concrete.