Analysis of Temperature Effects on Pavement Response at Denver International Airport

The Integrated Climatic Model (ICM) is used to evaluate the behavior of Denver International Airport (DIA) concrete pavements due to climatic loading. Pavement surface temperatures are highly influenced by local climatic factors like air temperature, amount of sunshine, wind, and radiation, and less influenced by material properties like heat capacity and thermal conductivity of the concrete. Only the temperatures near the pavement surface showed significant variation between the measured and calculated values. Changes in the average pavement temperature also led to significant changes in joint opening, and consequently to the effectiveness in load transfer across joints, which do not have dowels or other load transfer devices. Through the use of historical weather data and the ICM, it should be possible to accurately predict the load transfer efficiency across most joints over time for any particular region of the country.