Development of a Prototype Concept for Using 3D Concrete Printing in Pavement Construction

The use of 3D Concrete Printing (3DCP) in road construction or rehabilitation is an area which has not been researched in depth. This study presents a concept for using 3DCP to reinforce the base or subbase layer of pavement to improve performance and possibly extend the service life. A particle-bed printing technique known as Aggregate-bed printing is proposed to strengthen the base and subbase layers in selective locations to improve the overall performance. Laboratory scale soil-box was developed to construct the layers and plate load tests (PLT) were carried out to compare the performance of unreinforced and selectively reinforced pavement layers. The results suggest that concrete reinforcement increases the bearing capacity of the subbase layer by 10%. The road base and subbase generally experience pressure values less than 550 kPa as it is protected by a surface layer, and the deformation values at lower magnitude of applied pressure were reduced by 35% by concrete reinforcement.