Journal of Road Engineering xxx (xxxx) xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Road Engineering

journal homepage: www.keaipublishing.com/en/journals/journal-of-road-engineering

Review Article

Toughness improvement mechanism and evaluation of cement concrete for

road pavement: A review
Mingjing Fang a, *, Yiming Chen a, Yungang Deng b, Zhe Wang b, Mengjun Zhu b
a
School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
b
Transportation Branch, China Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group, Co., Ltd., Wuhan 430063, China

H I G H L I G H T S G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T

Toughness improvement mechanisms of

cement concrete pavement are analyzed.

The ways to improve the toughness of
pavement cement concrete are
summarized.

The toughness evaluation methods of
pavement cement concrete are
concluded.

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Traditional cement concrete has the disadvantages of low tensile strength, poor toughness, and rapid development
Cement concrete of cracks while cracking, which causes a significantly negative influence on the safety and durability of concrete
Road pavement road pavement. This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of toughness improvement mechanisms and evalu-
Toughness
ation methods of cement concrete for road pavement. The review indicates that (i) The performance of concrete
Toughness evaluation method
material depends on its material composition and internal structure. Aggregate size, cement properties and ad-
mixtures are the main factors of concrete toughness. (ii) The incorporation of rubber or fiber in pavement concrete
improves the toughness of concrete materials. However, these additions must be maintained within a reasonable
range. The amount of rubber and fiber are encouraged not more than 30% of the volume of fine aggregate and 2%
of the volume of concrete, respectively. (iii) The toughness of pavement concrete material includes the toughness
regarding bending, impact and fracture. The toughness of cement concrete for highway and municipal pavement
is generally evaluated by bending and fracture toughness, while the toughness of airfield pavement concrete is
more focused on impact toughness. (iv) The toughening measures of cement concrete for road pavement are
mainly mixed with rubber or fiber, while these two materials have their defects, and the application of high-
toughness cement concrete in the actual road still faces many challenges. For example, the synergistic effect of
rubber and fiber, the development and application of new flexible admixtures, and the formulation of the
toughness index of pavement cement concrete materials need further research.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: mingjingfang@whut.edu.cn (M. Fang), 262515@whut.edu.cn (Y. Chen), dyuga@qq.com (Y. Deng), 29211791@qq.com (Z. Wang), tsyzmj@163.
com (M. Zhu).
Peer review under responsibility of Chang’ an University.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jreng.2023.01.005
Received 28 August 2022; Received in revised form 8 January 2023; Accepted 9 January 2023
Available online xxxx
2097-0498/© 2023 The Authors. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co. Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article as: Fang, M. et al., Toughness improvement mechanism and evaluation of cement concrete for road pavement: A review,
Journal of Road Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jreng.2023.01.005
M. Fang et al.
1. Introduction
Due to the advantages of the wide sources of raw materials, ease to
form, strong adaptability, and low cost, cement concrete has developed
into the largest amount of building materials in the contemporary era,
and has been widely used in road pavement and other fields (Lin et al.,
2019; Wu and Lian, 1999). However, the low tensile strength and the
sudden brittle failure of traditional concrete without obvious plastic
deformation will seriously affect the safety and durability of road pave-
ment concrete (Kanakubo, 2006). Various studies have shown that the
cracking of concrete due to its high brittleness has become one of the
main reasons for accelerating the corrosion and aging of concrete as well
as causing damage to traffic infrastructure (Kejin et al., 1997; Li et al.,
2009; Salles, 2019). Therefore, concrete pavement with satisfying road
performance under traffic loads has the fundamental requirement to
improve the tensile strength and toughness of pavement concrete.
With the rapid development of traffic infrastructure construction, the
characteristics of heavy axle load and high-speed traffic flow put forward
higher requirements for the bending and tensile strength as well as
deformation performance of concrete (Yang et al., 2015). It is necessary
to ensure that concrete not only has sufficient strength but also has a
certain bending deformation capacity and toughness (Xu, 2014). Mean-
while, for the airport pavement which often bears a large impact aircraft
load, the concrete runway also needs to be able to resist the instanta-
neous stress caused by the impact of aircraft taking off and landing.
Therefore, increasing the toughness of concrete and making concrete
develop towards the direction of low brittleness and high toughness is the
inevitable trend for rigid pavement.
Accordingly, this paper presents a state-of-the-art review of the
toughness improvement mechanism and evaluation method of road
cement concrete. The organization of the contents is shown in Fig. 1.
Specifically, after Chapter 1 introduction, Chapter 2 is the summarization
of the realization mechanism of high-toughness cement concrete, and
Chapter 3 is to review the evaluation methods of toughness for cement
Fig. 1. Organization of the content.
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concrete. In the final Chapter, the conclusions and prospects are given.
This review hopefully can be taken as a reference for seeking ways to
improve the toughness of pavement cement concrete.
2. Realization mechanisms of high toughness
2.1. General understanding of toughness of concrete materials
Toughness is an important index to measure the dynamic properties
of materials, reflecting the ability of materials to deform and absorb
energy. Brittleness generally refers to the energy consumption value in
the process of material failure, which is an index relative to toughness, its
essence is the energy conversion process in which the maximum elastic
energy accumulated in the material before the critical point of fracture is
rapidly converted into the surface energy of the main crack (Fu, 1993).
The fracture surface energy is a measure of the brittleness of the material,
and its value depends on the characteristic parameters of the material's
composition, structure, and microstructure (Liu et al., 2019a, b). There-
fore, to reduce the brittleness of the material, it is an obvious method to
increase the fracture surface energy of materials.
The toughness of cement concrete mainly contains bending tough-
ness, impact toughness, and fracture toughness. Among them, bending
toughness refers to the bending deformation capacity of concrete under
static load, which is used to evaluate the toughening effect of concrete
mixed with high-strength or high-ductility materials. Generally, the en-
ergy absorbed by concrete in the process of bending failure is used to
calculate and evaluate. Impact toughness refers to the ability of concrete
to absorb plastic deformation work and fracture work under impact load,
which reflects the subtle defects and impact resistance of concrete, which
is normally calculated and evaluated by the impact energy of concrete.
Fracture toughness is used to measure the propagation state of cracks in
concrete, that is to determine which phase of cracks in concrete is in the
state of stability, expansion, and instability expansion (Sojobi and Liew,
2021; Wu, 2000; Zhang et al., 2019). The above three kinds of toughness
M. Fang et al.
are respectively applied to the toughness evaluation of concrete in
different road engineering application scenarios.
Accordingly, in the past decades, numerous methods have been
applied to overcome the defects of low toughness of concrete, such as
reinforced concrete, concrete-filled steel tube (Fu, 1993), or prestressed
concrete. However, the performance of concrete material is determined
by its composition and internal structure. The transformation of concrete
from brittle material to ductile material is essentially the process of
improving the internal structure of concrete, including improving the
pore structure, reducing porosity, improving the structure and perfor-
mance of the interface transition zone (Torrence et al., 2022), reducing
internal micro-cracks, and controlling the cracking and expansion of
micro-cracks during failure, etc. Currently, to improve the toughness of
concrete more efficiently, the toughness of concrete is normally realized
by improving the concrete material itself, as well as adding rubber, fiber,
polymer, and other admixtures to reduce the brittleness of concrete and
improve its flexural resistance (Li et al., 2019; Liu et al., 2019a, b; Yang
et al., 2020a, b; Wang et al., 2022).
2.2. Cementitious materials and aggregates-based toughness improvement
Hardened concrete is composed of three main parts: cement paste,
interface transition zone, and aggregate. The ratio of compressive
strength to flexural strength of cement mortar is called the brittleness
coefficient of cement, which varies with the type of cement and the hy-
dration age of cement. Studies have shown that changing the mineral
composition in cement can change the brittleness coefficient of cement
(Gao et al., 2021). The higher the strength grade of cement, the greater
the brittleness. Therefore, by improving the toughness of cement in
concrete constituent materials, the toughness of concrete can be
improved.
The interface transition zone is the transition area of concrete from
aggregate to cement stone body, which is a relatively weak part of the
concrete. The pore structure is one of the important components of
concrete microstructure. Porosity and pore structure plays an important
role in the macroscopic behavior of concrete. At the same time, it can be
seen from Fig. 2 that there are certain connection gaps at the interface
between the aggregate and the cement paste. It is concluded that
improving the interfacial properties of concrete can enhance the fracture
energy and fracture toughness of concrete, and also can affect the frac-
ture path of cracks in concrete (Gettu et al., 1998; Prokopski and Hal-
biniak, 2000). Adjusting the pore structure and porosity through
macroscopic means can improve the performance of concrete.
Aggregate is an important part of concrete, usually accounting for more
than 75% of the total volume of concrete, forming the skeleton of concrete
(Guan et al., 2022). Therefore, aggregates determine the rheological
Fig. 2. SEM photo of the interface between coarse aggregate and cement stone
(Wang et al., 2016).
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properties of fresh concrete, the strength of hardened concrete, and the
durability of concrete (Hubler et al., 2020). When the maximum particle
size of aggregate is between 5 and 20 mm, the fracture energy and fracture
toughness of concrete increase with the increase of aggregate particle size.
Meanwhile, the fracture energy and fracture toughness of ordinary
aggregate concrete and crushed stone concrete are larger than those of
pebble concrete (Zhang et al., 2000). When the maximum particle size of
aggregate is less than 40 mm, the fracture toughness of concrete increases
with the increase of the maximum particle size of aggregate. However,
when the maximum particle size of aggregate is greater than 40 mm, the
fracture toughness of concrete decreases with the increase of the maximum
particle size of aggregate. The toughness of concrete prepared with granite
machine-made sand instead of ordinary sand will be further improved (Wu
et al., 2000). Meanwhile, in addition to the influence of coarse aggregate,
fine aggregate will also affect the toughness of concrete. The research
shows that when 20% of waste foundry sand is used to replace fine
aggregate, the fracture toughness of concrete decreases by 25% (Aslani
et al., 2021). Therefore, too large or too small an aggregate volume ratio
will reduce the fracture energy and fracture toughness of concrete. When
using aggregate with high strength and high toughness can also improve
the toughness of concrete.
2.3. Admixture-based toughness improvement
As a kind of quasi-brittle material, the compressive strength of ordi-
nary concrete is much higher than its tensile strength. To improve the
toughness of concrete, the current research focuses on adding rubber,
fiber, or a combination of both into concrete (Choi et al., 2022; Davoud
Vafaei et al., 2022; Lai et al., 2022; Nguyen et al., 2022). In addition,
there is also some research on adding admixtures in concrete to modify
concrete and improve its toughness.
2.3.1. Improvement induced by rubber
The research on rubber powder concrete began in the 1980s. It is
made of rubber powder from waste tires and then added to concrete with
the appropriate dosage. When rubber is added to concrete, it can fill the
internal gap of concrete, improve the interface between cement and
aggregate (Mo et al., 2020; Ullah et al., 2022), restrain the generation
and development of micro-cracks in concrete, and form a structural
deformation center absorbing strain energy. The addition of rubber
particles can significantly reduce the elastic modulus of concrete speci-
mens and improve their deformation capacity. Meanwhile, as a visco-
elastic material, rubber can play a buffer role when concrete is subjected
to impact load and consumes impact work (Liu et al., 2004). When the
specimen has shrinkage deformation, rubber particles can absorb part of
the shrinkage energy, block the seepage channel and reduce the evapo-
ration rate of water, thus reducing the shrinkage stress and delaying the
cracking time (Chung and Hong, 1999), significantly improving the
toughness of concrete. In the process of bending test, rubber particles can
not only bear partial load like many tiny springs, but also prevent the
expansion of micro-cracks, delay the generation of new cracks, and show
ductile failure characteristics.
Rubber has two functions in concrete: first, rubber particles are
equivalent to organic impurities in sand, which is harmful to concrete
strength, and with the increase of its dosage, the weak points in concrete
structure increase, leading to the decline of structural strength. On the
other hand, there are a large number of pores of different types and di-
ameters in concrete. The addition of rubber particles fills these pores and
improves the density of concrete, as shown in Fig. 3. Meanwhile, under
the cementation of cement, the rubber particles are bonded with the pore
walls to form a structure with a certain strength, which can bear and
buffer a part of the stress when the concrete is compressed and can
eliminate the stress concentration point in the hole joints, restrict the
development of micro cracks. Due to the elastic medium function of
rubber powder, the toughness of rubber concrete is effectively improved,
and rubber concrete is also called "elastic concrete" (Song et al., 1997).
M. Fang et al.
Fig. 3. SEM photo of rubber concrete (Guo, 2020).
To study the effect of rubber on various properties of concrete,
including toughness, relevant scholars have conducted a lot of research.
Compared with the reference element, the compressive and flexural
strength of rubber concrete has little change, but the impact load is
increased, and the impact resistance of concrete is improved. Meanwhile,
adding an appropriate binder can improve the interface between rubber
powder and concrete, and further enhance the impact toughness of
concrete (Song et al., 1997). The addition of polymer rubber powder can
improve the flexural ratio and tension-compression ratio of concrete, and
significantly improve the toughness and crack resistance of concrete.
When the rubber powder content is 8.0%, the comprehensive toughening
effect is the best (Yang and Jiang, 2015). However, the density,
compressive strength, flexural strength, compressive elastic modulus,
and collapse degree of concrete are all reduced when rubber powder is
added to each cement-based material (Fattuhi and Clark, 1996). As long
as the rubber content is controlled in a reasonable range, not only can
ensure the strength of rubber concrete meet the engineering re-
quirements, but also can improve the shortcomings of high brittleness of
high-strength concrete and improve its ductility and deformation per-
formance (Li et al., 2007). Multiple groups of destructive and
non-destructive tests proved both the rubber concrete cube's compressive
strength and splitting tensile strength have different degrees of lower
with the increase of the rubber dosage (Choi et al., 2022). Meanwhile,
adding rubber to cement concrete can significantly reduce its elastic
modulus and the stiffness of concrete (Li et al., 2011; Yuan and Zheng,
2008), some results show that the flexural modulus of rubber concrete is
12% lower than that of ordinary concrete, and compared with ordinary
concrete, the broken rate of rubber cement concrete panel is reduced by
30%. As is shown in Fig. 4. Through the above research, the addition of
rubber reduces the strength of concrete, but it also reflects the density of
small, high toughness and good crack resistance and deformation ability
and mechanical properties of recoverable normal concrete is difficult to
achieve good performance.
Through the experimental research on the mixing ratio of rubber
concrete, the toughness of concrete under different rubber particle sizes
and dosages was tested, and some scholars gave the optimal rubber
particle size and dosage to guide practical engineering applications. To
study the influence of coarse rubber particles and fine rubber particles
with different dosages on static and dynamic mechanical indexes of
concrete, six different mixing ratios were designed and carried out a
static compression test and a dynamic hammer test. The test results show
that the addition of rubber particles reduces the compressive strength
and elastic modulus of concrete, and greatly enhances the energy dissi-
pation capacity of concrete's impact resistance (Atahan and Yücel, 2012).
The ductility, insulation, and damping properties of concrete increase
4
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Fig. 4. Comparison of breaking rate of two kinds of concrete pavement under
different service life (Wang and Fan, 2016).
significantly with the increase of rubber particle content. However, when
the content of rubber particles exceeds 25%, the compressive strength of
concrete decreases significantly (Issa and Salem, 2013). Rubber can
withstand a lot of strain, and change the concrete from brittle failure to
ductile failure in the process of accumulation.
On the micro level, the rubber concrete was regarded as a multiphase
composite composed of mortar, coarse aggregate, rubber particles, sand-
coarse aggregate interface, and sand-rubber particle interface. The
microscopic numerical model of rubber concrete was established to
simulate the flexural strength test of rubber concrete with different
rubber content and different water cement ratio. The results show that
the interface area of mortar and rubber particles has a great influence on
the flexural strength and failure process of rubber concrete. With the
increase of the water-cement ratio, the difference between the strength of
the rubber-mortar interface and the strength of mortar decreases, which
makes the decreasing trend of the flexural strength of rubber-concrete
moderate. With the increase of rubber content, the uncertainty of crack
development increases, and the brittle failure of concrete is weakened
(Xue et al., 2021). In general, under the premise of considering concrete
strength, crack resistance and energy dissipation, rubber particles can
appropriately replace 20%–40% of the aggregate. On the premise of high
requirements for impact resistance of concrete, rubber particles shall
replace no more than 60% of aggregate.
In addition to the replacement amount of rubber above, the rubber
particle size also has a great impact on the toughness of concrete. To
study the influence of different parameters on the physical and me-
chanical properties of rubber concrete, three kinds of rubber powder
content and four kinds of rubber powder particle size are used as
experimental parameters to test the flexural and tensile strength and
cubic compressive strength of rubber concrete and ordinary concrete and
obtained the brittleness coefficient of rubber concrete. The test results
show that the rubber concrete has less brittleness and good deformation
ability. The influence degree of rubber powder content on the strength
index of concrete is higher than that of particle size. The flexural tensile
strength and cube compressive strength of 10% and 20% rubber concrete
decreased with the increase of rubber powder content and increased with
the decrease of rubber powder particle size. The brittleness coefficient of
rubber concrete decreases with the increase of rubber powder content
and increases with the decrease of rubber particle size. The performance
index of rubber concrete with 30% content and 80 mesh fineness has
great discreteness, so it is suggested to use rubber powder with 20%
content and 60 mesh fineness in practical engineering (Wen et al., 2020).
Under the same amount of rubber powder, the finer the rubber powder,
M. Fang et al.
the higher the resistance of modified cement concrete, and the
improvement effect of impact toughness is more obvious (Lu, 2012).
Rubber particles can alleviate the stress concentration of crack tips
and absorb impact energy in the process of concrete impact failure. When
25% rubber particles were added, the compressive strength decreased by
34%, but the impact times increased by 6.2 times compared with the
reference concrete (Zhao et al., 2008). With the increase of rubber par-
ticle content, the strength and elastic modulus of concrete decrease
gradually, while the initial crack times and failure times of concrete in-
crease first and then decrease. When the rubber particle content is 30%,
the impact resistance of concrete is the best, which is three times of the
benchmark concrete (Khalil et al., 2015). The influence of rubber powder
content and particle size on the impact toughness of concrete is shown in
Fig. 5. Meanwhile, it is also found that under the same fineness of rubber
powder, the higher the amount of rubber powder, the higher the impact
toughness of modified cement concrete is improved.
Some scholars have studied the influence of different rubber pre-
treatment methods on the toughness of rubber concrete. When adding
waste tire rubber powder modified by NaOH solution into cement
mortar, the toughness of concrete samples is improved (Segre and Joekes,
2000). When using Na2CO3 solution, low-temperature plasma solution,
and methanol solution to pretreat the surface of rubber particles, the
concrete mixed with rubber particles soaked in low-temperature plasma
solution has the best toughness, and its bending strain energy and impact
strain energy are increased by 32% and 38.6% respectively compared
with ordinary rubber concrete (Han, 2017). Rubber is used to replace the
fine aggregate within the range of 0%–60% (about 25% of the total
aggregate volume), and polyvinyl acetate is used as the rubber surface
modifier. The research on the mechanical properties and durability pa-
rameters of concrete containing different percentages of rubber shows
that the compressive strength, flexural strength and tensile strength of
concrete are increased by 12%–18% after the surface modification of
rubber particles (Aghamohammadi et al., 2022). The addition of rubber
can significantly improve the impact toughness of concrete. Meanwhile,
there is optimal particle size and content of rubber. Due to the elastic
modulus and strong deformation ability, rubber is similar to a "tiny spring
body" in concrete, which can reduce stress concentration when subjected
to impact load, and store impact energy in rubber powder. The
cement-based material using rubber granules as an admixture has wide
application prospects in road engineering construction.
2.3.2. Improvement induced by fiber
Previous studies have shown that adding fiber to concrete is one of
the most economical and effective methods to improve the impact
toughness of concrete (Gong et al., 2022). After adding fiber to ordinary
concrete, the fiber can form a uniform chaotic distribution system in the
concrete, which can not only effectively improve the early cracking
Fig. 5. Influence of rubber powder content and particle size on impact tough-
ness of concrete (Lu, 2012).
5
Journal of Road Engineering xxx (xxxx) xxx
defect of concrete, but also improve its toughness and impact resistance
(Erfield et al., 2013). A proper amount of fiber is beneficial to improve
the tensile strength, compressive strength, and bending toughness of
concrete, but when the fiber content is too high, the dispersion of fiber
decreases, which is detrimental to the performance of concrete (Deng and
Ding, 2020). At present, the fiber research for strengthening the tough-
ness of concrete is mainly steel fiber, including basalt fiber, polymer
fiber, as well as a variety of fiber hybrid test research (Alhozaimy et al.,
1996; Quan and Tao, 2011; Wang et al., 2014; Xu, 2011). A lot of
theoretical research and practical experience show that adding fiber to
concrete can significantly improve the brittleness of concrete, improve
the cracking resistance of concrete, and achieve the effect of toughening.
The improvement of fiber to concrete performance is mainly reflected in
the following three aspects. (i) Enhancing effect, adding an appropriate
amount of fiber can improve the strength of concrete. (ii) Toughening
effect, in the micro and macro stages of the development of concrete
cracks, fiber can withstand part of the tension, restrain the development
of cracks to a certain extent, and improve the toughness of concrete. (iii)
Crack resistance, in the plastic stage when the concrete is not hardened,
the fiber can inhibit the cracks caused by changes in temperature and
humidity to a certain extent. Based on the effects of fibers on concrete,
the mechanism of toughness enhancement of concrete with fibers can be
analyzed from micro and macro perspectives.
Firstly, analyzing the toughness enhancement mechanism of fiber-
reinforced concrete from the microscopic point of view. In concrete
that has not yet been subjected to load, there are microscopic cracks
caused by deformation constraint stress, and they are invisible to the
naked eye. After loading the concrete structure, the original micro-crack
expands. Meanwhile, new micro-cracks form until the concrete fails. On
the theoretical basis of the microscopic study on the initial consolidation
and contraction of concrete, there are micro cracks in any dense concrete,
and these cracks exist between phases, between stone, sand, cement
colloid, and cement microparticles. As shown in Fig. 6.
In the process of the occurrence and development of micro-cracks in
concrete, the tensile strength of concrete is still very low, and fibers with
high tensile strength are used to bear the tensile force in concrete, which
can prevent the formation and development of micro-cracks in concrete.
Meanwhile, much fiber monofilament uniformly distributed in the con-
crete played the role of "supporting" aggregate, reducing the concrete
surface water and aggregate segregation, thereby greatly reducing the
porosity of the concrete and delaying the generation of macroscopic
initial cracks. Therefore, fibers can effectively inhibit the production and
development of the early dry micro-crack and segregation crack of con-
crete, greatly reduce the shrinkage crack of concrete, especially effec-
tively inhibit the generation of connected crack, and improve the
Fig. 6. Interface diagram of plain concrete (Lyu et al., 2020).
M. Fang et al.
toughness of concrete. However, with the increase of fiber content, the
interface transition zone will also increase significantly, increasing in-
ternal defects of concrete and the uniform decline of concrete, as shown
in Fig. 7. Therefore, the fiber dosage should be kept in a reasonable
range.
Secondly, analyzing the toughness enhancement mechanism of fiber-
reinforced concrete from the macroscopic point of view. There are three
main failure mechanisms in the failure process of cement-based com-
posites, the failure mechanism in cement matrix (such as micro-crack
shielding mechanism), the failure mechanism of aggregate deflection
crack, and the failure mechanism of pull-out. Based on the above failure
mechanisms, increasing energy dissipation during the fracture process is
the most important measure to reduce material brittleness and change
the fracture characteristics of concrete. Adding fiber into concrete to
increase toughening, mainly using steel fiber pulling out failure mecha-
nism, that is, relying on the crack resistance and strengthening effect of
fiber, fiber concrete before the destruction of a large range of slow and
stable crack expansion, to avoid the sudden brittle fracture of concrete.
The compound is the main way of cement-based materials with high
performance, and fiber reinforcement is the core (Wu, 1999). A new type
of high-performance road cement concrete with an organic, inorganic,
and metal multiphase composite was designed from the perspective of
material composite. Among them, cement hydration products, steel fiber,
and polymer formed the interpenetrating structure of the multiphase
spatial network. The concrete has excellent mechanical and road per-
formance, including high early strength, high interlayer bonding strength
with old concrete, good wear resistance, and high bending toughness
(Wang et al., 2000).
Previous research shows that steel fiber concrete can effectively
improve the toughness, ductility, and durability of concrete (Ding and
Liu, 2010; Lee et al., 1991; Li et al., 2018; Liu et al., 1985; Yang and Ren,
2006). It was found that the mechanical properties and bending tough-
ness of SFRC after cracking were significantly improved by the addition
of steel fiber. The secondary peak value of load after cracking is increased
by 41.5% compared with the primary cracking load. According to the
relation between the bending toughness ratio and steel fiber content, it is
considered that a steel fiber content of 36 kg/m3 can improve the
bending toughness of concrete to the greatest extent (Zhou et al., 2017).
Meanwhile, the steel fiber of waste tires can also obviously improve the
toughness of concrete. With the increase of steel fiber content, the
load-deflection curve becomes fuller and the secondary peak value of
load increases, and the concrete is closer to the ideal elastoplastic ma-
terial. However, the toughness of waste tire steel fiber concrete is lower
than that of ordinary steel fiber. If the toughness of waste tire steel fiber
concrete is the same, the content of waste tire steel fiber concrete is 25%–
Fig. 7. Interface diagram of polypropylene fiber concrete (Lyu et al., 2020).
6
Journal of Road Engineering xxx (xxxx) xxx
45% higher than that of ordinary steel fiber (Gao, 2018). Steel fiber could
significantly improve the bending toughness and impact resistance of
concrete, and there is a linear relationship between the flexural tough-
ness index of SFRC and the logarithm of impact energy (Wang and Jia,
2011). The load-deflection curve of steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC)
is shown in Fig. 8.
It is found that in addition to steel fiber, other fibers such as poly-
propylene fiber (PPF), polyvinyl alcohol fiber (PVAF), and basalt fiber
(BF), etc. can improve the toughness of concrete (Zeyad, 2020; Zhang
et al., 2021), the bending failure of fiber reinforced concrete is shown in
Fig. 9. Relevant experimental studies show that PPF has no significant
effect on the compressive strength and flexural strength of concrete, but
PPF can improve the bending toughness and impact toughness of con-
crete (Alhozaimy et al., 1996). When the PPF content is low, the fiber is
not enough to bear the tensile stress of the whole structure. The amount
of modified PPF is proportional to the flexural property of concrete.
When the fiber content increases from 1% and 2% to 3%, the flexural
strength increases obviously, and when the fiber content exceeds 3%, the
flexural strength begins to decrease. The flexural strength of modified
PPF ultra-high toughness concrete is increased by 184%–254% compared
with ordinary concrete. The bonding force between PPF and cementi-
tious material was improved by the modification process, the crack was
reduced, and the flexural strength of concrete was greatly improved
(Wen et al., 2021). Using PPF to optimize the micro and macro-structural
components, the compressive strength of the material can reach about 80
MPa, and flexural capacity and elastic modulus can reach 15.2 MPa and
78.4 GPa respectively (Amran et al., 2022). Meanwhile, PVAF also can
significantly improve the bending toughness and deformation capacity of
concrete. When the fiber content is 0.78, 1.0, and 1.3 kg/m3, compared
with plain concrete, the toughness index I5 is 2.89, 2.82, and 3.24 times
higher than plain concrete, I10 increased by 4.33, 5.08 and 6.29 times,
and I30 increased by 7.91, 7.98 and 8.83 times, respectively. Under the
same fiber volume ratio, the flexural toughness of PVAF concrete is
higher than that of PPF concrete, and PVAF makes a concrete change
from brittle failure to ductile failure (Deng et al., 2007). The bending
toughness test results of fiber-reinforced concrete are shown in Table 1.
Due to the relatively low production cost and high mechanical response
of PPF and PVAF, it can be widely used in production.
Basalt fiber is made from natural basalt ore, through high-speed
drawing with platinum-rhodium alloy drawing bushing after crushing
and melting at 1450 C–1500 C (Li et al., 2022). Basalt fiber has excellent
mechanical properties and stable chemical properties, and as a silicate
fiber, it has natural compatibility with cement (Kabay, 2014; Mangat and
Azari, 1990). Basalt fiber concrete can not only retain its original high
compressive strength but also greatly improve the tensile performance,
crack resistance, and impact toughness of concrete (Xu et al., 2011).
Fig. 8. Load-deflection curves of SFRC (Zhou et al., 2017).
M. Fang et al. Journal of Road Engineering xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 9. Failure behavior of fiber-reinforced concrete specimen in bending test (Zhang et al., 2021).

(Wang et al., 2020). Mixing different kinds of fibers to exert the "positive
Table 1
hybrid effect" at different levels and different loading stages of concrete,
Test results of flexural toughness of fiber-reinforced concrete beams (Deng et al.,
and thus enhance the toughness of concrete.
2007).
Specimen Toughness index Largest load Bending and tensile 2.3.3. Improvement induced by fiber-rubber
number (N) strength (MPa)
I5 I10 I20 The fiber-rubber concrete (FRRC) (Islam et al., 2022) is prepared by
C 1.00 1.00 1.00 17,600.1 5.28 mixing rubber and fiber into concrete, which can give full play to the
PVA-0.78 kg/ 3.89 5.53 8.91 19,433.5 5.82 advantages of the two materials of rubber and fiber, bringing good
m3 ductility, toughness, crack resistance, and damage resistance to concrete
PVA-1.0 kg/ 3.82 6.08 8.98 21,911.7 6.57
(Ganesan et al., 2013; Karimipour et al., 2020; Li and Li, 2017). Rubber
m3
PVA-1.3 kg/ 4.24 7.29 9.83 23,434.6 7.02 and steel fibers acted in the initial crack stage and the unstable crack
m3 development stage, respectively, synergistically enhancing their fracture
PP-0.9 kg/m3 2.87 4.90 5.14 17,566.7 5.30 toughness (Fu et al., 2019). Under compression, the compressive
toughness of concrete in SFR-RUC was significantly improved due to the
bridging of steel fiber and the toughening and anti-cracking effect of
Based on the stress-strain curve, Wang successfully calculated the peak
rubber (Noaman et al., 2016). Some scholars have found that when the
toughness and ultimate toughness of BFRC under different conditions
replacement rate of rubber particles is 5%, the content of basalt fiber is 4
and concluded that BFRC has the most optimum fiber content. Mean-
kg/m3, and the content of fly ash is 15%, the concrete has the best per-
while, through SEM scanning, he found that the bonding between fibers
formance. Meanwhile, with the increase in rubber particle replacement
and concrete is relatively tight, which can achieve a good bonding effect.
rate, the compressive strength of concrete decreases significantly, and the
The incorporation of basalt fibers can optimize the internal micro-pore
tensile strength and flexural strength of basalt fiber are greatly improved
structure inside the concrete, the inherent micro-cracks in the early
by adding basalt fiber (Liu et al., 2019a, b). The uniaxial compressive
shrinkage and hardening process of cement can be effectively reduced
strain peaks of rubber concrete and rubber fiber concrete are 1.74 and
and controlled, and the curvature ductility and bending capacity of the
1.92 times that of ordinary concrete, respectively. The ultimate deflec-
beam is improved. However, the addition of fiber does not improve the
tion under flexural and tensile load is 0.66 mm and 0.80 mm, respec-
interface bonding between cement slurry and aggregate (Abed and
tively, and the bending pressure ratio is 1.45 and 1.64 times that of
Alhafiz, 2019; Wang et al., 2016). Moreover, the basalt fiber can improve
ordinary concrete. The addition of rubber and fiber greatly improves the
the elastoplastic deformation resistance of concrete, so as to inhibit its
toughness and denaturation of ordinary cement concrete (Wang et al.,
bending damage and failure, and when the volume dosage is 2 kg/m3, the
2008). Bending test results of various types of concrete are shown in
bending resistance reaches the best effect (Zhao et al., 2018). The good
Table 2. In addition to the above traditional quasi-static load tests, FRRC
compatibility of basalt fiber and cement provides a huge advantage in
still shows excellent tensile properties in dynamic high-strain rate tests,
improving the toughness of concrete. While increasing the toughness of
concrete, basalt fiber reduces the concrete strength loss caused by defects
caused by mutual exclusion of fiber and aggregate, and has a huge Table 2
application prospect. Bending test results of some kinds of concrete (Wang et al., 2008).
To give full play to the advantages of various fibers through the su-
Concrete Peak Peak Ultimate Flexural The ratio of
perposition effect, some scholars focus on hybrid fiber concrete (Kong type load deflection deflection strength flexural
et al., 2018; Nguyen et al., 2022; Shao et al., 2012; Zhang et al., 2021). (kN) (mm) (mm) (MPa) strength to
Some test results show that hybrid fibers can improve the tensile and compressive
flexural strength of self-compacting concrete, hybrid fibers have a syn- strength
ergistic effect on the rheological properties and mechanical properties of Benchmark 27.0 0.30 0.32 6.9 0.08
self-compacting concrete, and hybrid fiber can improve the toughness concrete
and bending strength of self-compacting concrete (Nehdi and Ladanchuk, (BC)
Rubber 22.5 0.36 0.66 5.8 0.12
2004). Nonlinear fracture mechanics is more suitable for the fracture concrete
process of fiber concrete, and the fracture toughness is greatly improved (RC)
with the increase of fiber content (Soroushian et al., 1998). Meanwhile, Rubber fiber 24.0 0.36 0.80 6.0 0.13
for the bending toughness of concrete, the appropriate content of PAN concrete
(RFC)
fiber and PVA fiber is 1.5–1.8 kg/m3 and 1.3–1.5 kg/m3, respectively

7
M. Fang et al. Journal of Road Engineering xxx (xxxx) xxx

reducing and controlling the growth of cracks (Lai et al., 2022).

Based on the above test results, the replacement of rubber aggregate
significantly reduces the compressive strength of concrete and improves
the ductility or toughness, while the addition of fiber improves the
toughness of concrete and slightly improves its compressive strength. The
combination of fiber and rubber (FRRC) gives play to the combined effect
of material performance advantages. In the test range considered, FRRC
has excellent compression resistance, impact toughness and resistance to
bending deformation, and can be used as a promising material to protect
the pavement from impact load.

3. Evaluation methods of toughness for road pavement concrete

The toughness of cement concrete can be divided into bending

toughness, impact toughness, and fracture toughness. Bending toughness
represents the bending deformation capacity of concrete materials.
Impact toughness represents the ability of concrete material to resist Fig. 10. ASTM C1018 schematic diagram of bending toughness evaluation
impact load. Fracture toughness represents the ability of concrete ma- method (ASTM, 2003).
terials to resist structural crack development. Based on different re-
quirements of the structure, the above three kinds of toughness are
suitable for different application scenarios, such as road projects focused
on the flexural toughness of concrete are considered, and concrete
pavement is more focused on the impact toughness of the assessment.
Meanwhile, the study of the toughness evaluation method of concrete has
also been conducted (Deng, 2016; Li et al., 2017; Shi et al., 2020). This
paper lists several commonly used methods to evaluate the toughness of
cement concrete.

3.1. Evaluation for bending toughness of concrete

3.1.1. Evaluation by ASTM C1018

Using the toughness evaluation method of ideal elastic-plastic mate-
rials as a reference, the American Society for Testing and Materials has
formulated a test and evaluation method for concrete flexural toughness:
ASTM C1018, which uses I5, I10, and I20 as toughness indices to measure
the toughness of concrete. As shown in Fig. 10 and Eq. (1) (ASTM, 2003). Fig. 11. JSCE SF4 schematic diagram of bending toughness evaluation method
8 (Japan Society of Civil Engineers, 1984).
> T3
>
> I5 ¼
>
> T1
>
>
< T5:5
I10 ¼ (1) Tb l
> T1 σb ¼ (2)
>
> δtb bh2
>
>
>
> T10:5
: I20 ¼
T1 where σ b is the bending toughness coefficient (MPa), δtb is the set
deflection value, which is numerically equal to the span divided by 150
where T1, T3, T5.5, and T10.5 are the areas of the regions OAB, OACD, (mm), Tb is the area under the load-deflection curve before deflection δtb
OAEF, and OAGH in Fig. 8 (N⋅mm), I5, I10, and I20 are the toughness (N⋅mm), l is the span (mm), b is the width of the sample (mm), h is the
indices at different stages of the load-deflection curve. height of the sample (mm).
ASTM C1018 belongs to the energy ratio method, which has the ad- The bending toughness coefficient σ b obtained by JSCE SF4 has the
vantages of clear physical meaning and a clear elastic-plastic mechanical dimension of strength and belongs to the strength method. Compared
basis. However, the disadvantage is that the rising section of the load- with the evaluation method of ASTM C1018, the advantage of this
deflection curve is not strictly linear (Ding et al., 2005). Therefore, it is method is that the calculation process is simple, the influence of the
difficult to accurately determine the position of the initial crack point A, initial crack point on the calculation results is avoided, and can reflect the
and the determination of the initial crack point will have a great influ- influence of fiber type and dosage on the bending toughness of concrete
ence on the calculation result of the toughness index, which affects the to a certain extent through a load-deflection curve. The disadvantage is
accuracy of the method. that calculating the strength by the average method cannot well reflect
the behavior of the specimen before and after cracking, and there may be
3.1.2. Evaluation by JSCE SF4 a deviation between the theoretical value and the actual value of the
The Japan Society of Civil Engineering has developed a method for bending toughness coefficient calculated by Deng et al. (2014). At the
testing and evaluating the flexural toughness of concrete: JSCE SF4, same time, the theoretical basis for taking 1/150 of the mid-span
which uses the flexural toughness coefficient to evaluate the toughness of calculation deflection is not sufficient.
concrete. It is determined that when the specimen deflection reaches δtb
(1/150 times of span), the bending toughness coefficient σ b , which is 3.1.3. Evaluation by RILEM TC 162 TDF
calculated from the area under the load-deflection curve and the spec- The European Federation of Materials and Structures has developed a
imen size, σ b is used to measure the bending toughness of concrete. As test and evaluation method for the flexural toughness of fiber-reinforced
shown in Fig. 11 and Eq. (2) (Japan Society of Civil Engineers, 1984). concrete: RILEM TC 162 TDF, which uses equivalent flexural strength to

8
M. Fang et al. Journal of Road Engineering xxx (xxxx) xxx

measure the flexural toughness of concrete. As shown in Fig. 12 and Eq. 3.1.4. Evaluation by CECS13: 2009 standard
(3) (Vandewalle, 2002). CECS13:2009 standard of the China Engineering Construction Asso-
8 ciation recommends two evaluation methods of concrete bending
>
> 3 DfBZ;2 l toughness: one is the four-point bending test method, and the other is the
>
< feq;2 ¼ 2 0:5 bh2 three-point bending notch beam test method (China Association for En-
(3)
>
> DfBZ;3 l gineering Construction Standardization, 2009). For the four-point
: feq;3 ¼ 3
>
bending test, the evaluation method in CECS13: 2009 is based on
2 0:5 bh2
ASTM C1018. As shown in Figs. 10 and 13, and Eq. (4).
where DfBZ;2 and DfBZ;3 are the areas (N⋅mm) of ABCD and ABEF in 8
>
> SOACD
Fig. 10(a) and (b) respectively, feq;2 and feq;3 are the equivalent bending >
> I5 ¼
>
> SOAB
strength (MPa), DbBZ is the energy absorbed by plain concrete in Fig. 12. >
>
< SOAEF
RILEM TC 162 TDF is an intensity method. Compared with the JSCE I10 ¼ (4)
>
> SOAB
SF4 method, its advantage is that the contribution stages of fiber to the >
>
>
> S
load-deflection curve and toughening effects of fiber at different stages in >
> OAGH
: I20 ¼
the softening section of the load-deflection curve are determined. The SOAB
shortcoming is that this method is only suitable for fiber concrete samples
with high content and high strength. When fiber content is low or organic where I5, I10, and I20 are the ratio of the areas (SOACD, SOAEF, SOAGH)
fiber is used, the rate of decline of the load-deflection curve obtained enclosed by the corresponding beam deflection curves (3δ, 5.5δ, 10.5δ) to
after peak load may exceed the rate of decline of a straight line from peak the areas (SOAB) enclosed by the initial deflection curves (δ), respectively.
load to deflection of δL plus 0.3 mm, making this method unusable. As The three-point bending notched beam test method is based on the
shown in Fig. 12(c), this method cannot be used because the slope of the RILEM TC 162 TDF standard. The size of the test piece is 150 mm  150
descending section of concrete mixed with organic polypropylene fiber is mm  550 mm and the span is 500 mm. In this method, the energy ab-
greater than that of line AB after peak load. sorption value Dn and equivalent flexural strength feq;n of fiber-reinforced

Fig. 12. RILEM TC 162 TDF schematic diagram of bending toughness evaluation method (Han and Yan, 2010). (a) Method of obtaining area DfBZ;2 . (b) Method of
obtaining area DfBZ;3 . (c) Illustration of the unsuitability of the RILEM TC 162 TDF method.

9
M. Fang et al. Journal of Road Engineering xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 13. CECS13: 2009 diagram of four-point bending loading (CECS, 2009).

concrete are used as the evaluation indexes of flexural toughness. As By studying the four-point bending test and three-point bending test
shown in Figs. 14 and 15, and Eq. (5). of fiber-reinforced concrete, some scholars (Bunsell and Renard, 2021;
8 Xia et al., 2017) conclude, that the accuracy of the results obtained by the
>
> D1f four-point bending test is consistent with the results of the three-point
>
> Feq;1 ¼
>
> 0:5 bending test.
>
>
>
> D
>
> 2f Based on the above four evaluation methods, other scholars have also
< Feq;2 ¼ 0:5
proposed evaluation methods of concrete toughness. The PCS (post-crack
(5)
>
> f ¼ 3 Feq;1 L strengths) method for testing and evaluating the flexural toughness of
>
>
>
>
eq;1
2 bh2 concrete, which measures the flexural toughness of concrete by calcu-
>
>
>
> lating the equivalent flexural strength PCS after peak load (Banthia and
>
> 3 Feq;2 L
: feq;2 ¼
2 bh2 Trottier, 1995). The PCER (post-crack energy ratio) method for evalu-
ating the flexural toughness of concrete, that is, the method of post-crack
where δL (mm) is the deflection at the proportional ultimate load FL (N), energy ratio after peak load. Based on the bilinear model of ideal
D1f (N⋅mm) is the energy absorption value of the fiber contribution to fiber-reinforced concrete, the method measures the toughness of con-
concrete when δ1 ¼ δL þ 0:65 mm, which is equal to the area enclosed by crete by calculating the area fraction of the measured load-deflection
ABDCG, and D2f (N⋅mm) is the energy absorption value of the fiber curve after peak load to the area fraction of the ideal bilinear model
contribution to concrete when δ2 ¼ δL þ 2:65 mm, which is equal to the after peak load (Han and Yan, 2010). Steel fibers can significantly
area enclosed by ABFEG, Feq;1 (N) and Feq;2 (N) are equivalent loads, feq;1 improve the stiffness of concrete beams and reduce the crack width and
(MPa) and feq;2 (MPa) are equivalent flexural strength, b (mm) is the spacing through experimental research on SFRC under static and fatigue
cross-section width of the specimen, and h (mm) is the cross-section loads (Gao et al., 2014). The calculation method of stiffness and cracks of
height of the specimen. steel fiber high-strength concrete beams under fatigue load is proposed.

Fig. 14. CECS13: 2009 schematic diagram of three-point bending loading (CECS, 2009).

Fig. 15. CECS13: 2009 schematic diagram of evaluation method for bending toughness of three-point curved notched beam test (CECS, 2009).

10
M. Fang et al.
The advantages and disadvantages of existing flexural toughness evalu-
ation methods at home and abroad are analyzed and evaluated, and a
flexural toughness evaluation method that overcomes the existing
shortcomings and is suitable for the characteristics of SFRC is proposed.
3.2. Evaluation of impact toughness of concrete
At present, the research on the impact toughness of concrete is not
unified at home and abroad. According to the test methods and devices of
concrete impact resistance commonly used in existing research, they can
be mainly divided into the following categories.
3.2.1. Drop weight impact test
Drop weight impact test recommended by ACI (American Concrete
Institute) Committee 544 (Davoud Vafaei et al., 2022; Deng, 2003), the
test setup is shown in Fig. 16. The test uses the number of initial cracking
impacts N1 , the number of failure impacts N2 , the difference ΔN between
the initial and final crack failure times, the total impact energy W
absorbed by the specimen during the failure process, and the impact
energy ΔW that continues to be absorbed after the initial crack as the
evaluation indexes to evaluate the impact resistance of concrete (Yang
et al., 2008). Eq. (6) is recommended to calculate the impact energy of
concrete.
W ¼ Nmgh
where W (N⋅m) is the impact energy, N is the number of impacts, m (kg)
is heavy hammer mass, h (mm) is the hammer falling height, and g (m2/s)
is the acceleration of gravity.
Fig. 16. Schematic diagram of drop weight impact test (Liang, 2014).
Fig. 17. Diagram of split Hopkinson pressure bar impact test device
(Wu, 2015).
Journal of Road Engineering xxx (xxxx) xxx
3.2.2. Split hopkinson pressure bar impact test
Split hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) impact test is often used to
analyze the dynamic response of concrete under different strain rates,
and its test device is shown in Fig. 17. SHPB impact test is based on two
basic assumptions: (a) plane assumption, that is, when the stress wave
propagates in the slender rod, each cross-section in the elastic rod always
remains in the plane state; (b) stress uniformity is assumed, that is, stress
waves are repeated 2–3 times in the specimen, and the stress in the
specimen is equal everywhere (Fan et al., 2010; Zhao, 2021). To meet the
above basic assumptions, it is usually required to test concrete specimens
with a small size (diameter less than 100 mm), which limits the appli-
cation of this method in the field of concrete with large coarse aggregate
particle size and long steel fiber length.
3.2.3. Projectile impact test
The projectile impact test device generally consists of three main
parts: a high-speed projectile system, a velocity measurement system,
and the test piece. The schematic diagram of the device is shown in
Fig. 18. In this method, high-pressure gas (such as helium, nitrogen, etc.)
is used as the driving force to make bullets of different sizes and masses
impact slab concrete specimens at high rates, and the velocity change of
bullets during impact is measured by the velocity measurement system.
The impact resistance of concrete is evaluated by the energy difference of
bullets before and after impact, penetration depth, crater diameter, and
(6) specimen failure pattern.
3.2.4. Pendulum impact test
The pendulum impact test method for concrete comes from the
Charpy pendulum impact test of metal materials. Many scholars modified
the Charpy pendulum or designed the pendulum impact testing machine
that can be used for different types of specimens according to the Charpy
pendulum principle. The schematic diagram of the device is shown in
Fig. 19. The pendulum impact tester general frame, pendulum, control
system, and electric control system components, such as the pendulum by
rotating arm are connected to the rotating shaft, the pendulum when
tested up to a certain height to make it has a certain potential energy,
release the pendulum to make it free fall impact simply supported on the
vertical bearing beam specimens, record the pendulum angle in the
before and after the shocking rise, The potential energy loss of the
pendulum is calculated as the energy absorbed by the specimen during
impact to evaluate the impact resistance of concrete.
3.3. Evaluation for fracture toughness of concrete
The commonly used test methods for the fracture toughness of con-
crete are the three-point bending test of the notched beam and the
Fig. 18. Schematic diagram of projectile impact test device (Zhang et al., 2005).
11
M. Fang et al. Journal of Road Engineering xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 19. Schematic diagram of pendulum impact test device (Pham et al., 2018).

Q FHQ  103
KIC ¼ 1 f ðαÞ (7)
th2
8
>
> Pini þ mg  102
>
< FHQ ¼
> 2tanð15 Þ
(8)
>
> 3:675  ½1  0:12ðα  0:45Þ 
>
: f ðαÞ ¼
> 3
ð1  αÞ2

Q
where KIC (MPa⋅m1/2) is the crack initiation toughness, α is the ratio of
prefabricated crack length to specimen height, α ¼ ah0 , f ðαÞ is a function of
α, which is used to calculate crack initiation toughness in the specifica-
tion, t (m) is the thickness of specimen, h (m) is the height of specimen, a0
(m) is the length of the prefabricated crack, FHQ (kN) is the horizontal
load of crack initiation, Pini (kN) is a load of crack initiation, and is the
load corresponding to the turning point of straight section and bending
Fig. 20. Schematic diagram of wedge splitting tensile test device (Xue section of curve ascending section, m (kg) is the weight of the force
et al., 2022b). transmission device, g (m/s2) is the acceleration of gravity.
The calculation of failure fracture toughness is shown in Eqs. 9–12
below.
wedge-splitting test. The notch beam three-point bending method is
widely used at home and abroad because of its advantages of simple FHmax  103
S
specimen preparation, low requirement of the test instrument, and easy- KIC ¼ 1 f ðαc Þ (9)
th2
to-obtain measurement parameters (Hubler et al., 2020). In the 1980s,
the International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction 8
>
> Pmax þ mg  102
>
< FHmax ¼
Materials, Systems, and Structures (RILEM) recommended the use of a > 2tanð15 Þ
notched beam three-point bending test to determine the fracture (10)
toughness, fracture energy, and critical crack length and other fracture >
> 3:675  ½1  0:12ðαc  0:45Þ 
>
: f ðαÞ ¼
> 3
parameters of concrete (Shah, 1990). At the same time, based on the ð1  αc Þ2
double-K fracture model proposed by Xu (2011), the fracture toughness
of concrete is evaluated by the crack initiation toughness and the insta- 2 0 112 3
bility fracture toughness (Ince and Bildik, 2021). 6 B 13:18 C 7
6 C 7  h0
ac ¼ ðh þ h0 Þ61  B
@ Vc Et þ 9:16A 7 (11)
4 FHmax
5
3.3.1. Wedge splitting test
The size of the wedge-splitting test specimen was 200 mm  200 mm
 230 mm (t  b  h), and the schematic diagram of the device was "  2 #
shown in Fig. 20. The calculation of crack initiation toughness is shown 1 a0 þ h0
E¼ 13:18 1   9:16 (12)
in Eqs. (7) and (8) (NDRC, 2005; Xue et al., 2022a, b). tci h þ h0

12
M. Fang et al. Journal of Road Engineering xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 21. Schematic diagram of the three-point bending test device (Hu and Huang, 2011).

buckle opening displacement, E (GPa) is the calculated elastic modulus,

Table 3
Toughness evaluation method of cement concrete. a0 (m) is the initial fracture length, ci is calculated according to the
straight line of the ascending section of the curve of crack opening
The Evaluation method Advantage Disadvantage
displacement.
toughness of
cement
concrete 3.3.2. Three-point bending test of the notched beam
Flexural ASTM C1018 Physical meaning is The location of the The size of the notched beam three-point bending test specimen is
toughness (ASTM, 2003) clear initial crack point is 100 mm  400 mm  100 mm (t  b  h), and the notch depth a0 ¼ 50
difficult to mm. The schematic diagram of the device is shown in Fig. 21. The
determine (Ding calculation of crack initiation toughness is shown in Eqs. 13 and 14 (Hu
et al., 2005)
and Huang, 2011; NDRC, 2005; Wang et al., 2012; Yang et al., 2020a,
JSCE SF4 (JSCE, The calculation The theoretical basis
1984) process is simple is not sufficient 2020b).
(Deng et al., 2014)
RILEM TC 162 TDF The toughening Only suitable for ini 3Pini S pffiffiffiffiffi
KIC ¼ a0 F1 ðv1 Þ (13)
(Vandewalle, effect of fiber at high-content, high- 2h2 t
2002) different stages was strength fiber
determined concrete (Han and  
1:99  v1 ð1  v1 Þ 2:15  3:93v1 þ 2:7v21
Yan, 2010) F1 ðv1 Þ ¼ 3 (14)
CECS13:2009 Physical meaning is It is difficult to ð1 þ 2v1 Þð1  v1 Þ2
(CECS, 2009) clear determine the initial
crack point of the ini
where KIC is the crack initiation toughness, Pini (kN) is the crack initia-
four-point bending
test. The application tion load, S (m) is the specimen span, h (m) is the height of the specimen,
range of the three- t (m) is specimen thickness, a0 (m) is the initial crack length, v1 is the
point notch beam initial height ratio, v1 ¼ ah0 .
bending test has
The calculation of failure fracture toughness is shown in Eqs. 15–18
certain limitations
Impact Drop weight Low requirements of The manual below.
toughness impact test (Deng, test conditions and a operation has certain
2003) wide range of errors un 3Pmax S pffiffiffiffi0
KIC ¼ a F1 ðvc Þ (15)
application 2h2 t
Split Hopkinson Simple principle and It is not suitable for
pressure bar easy operation concrete with large  
1:99  vc ð1  vc Þ 2:15  3:93vc þ 2:7v2c
impact test (Fan coarse aggregate F1 ðvc Þ ¼ 3 (16)
et al., 2010) particle size and long ð1 þ 2vc Þð1  vc Þ2
steel fiber length
(Zhao, 2021) rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
0 2 tEC
Projectile impact The test results are The test conditions
a ¼ h tan1  0:1135 (17)
test (Zhang et al., highly accurate are demanding and π 32:6
2005) dangerous
Pendulum impact The high degree of Can not describe the " #
24Pa 0:66
test (Pham et al., automation concrete process
E¼ 0:76  2:28v2 þ 3:87v22  2:04v32 þ (18)
2018) change during the thCMOD ð1  v2 Þ2
test
Fracture Wedge splitting Does not involve the Requires specific un
toughness test (NDRC, 2005) impact of self- loading device
where KIC is the fracture toughness of instability, Pmax (kN) is the peak
0 0
weight load, a (m) is the critical equivalent fracture length, vc ¼ ah ; v2 ¼ ah, E
Three-point The method is The weight of the
(GPa) is the calculated elastic modulus, C is P-CMOD curve flexibility,
bending test of the simple and the specimen has a great
notched beam requirements for the influence on the test C ¼ CMOD
P , and CMOD is the crack opening displacement.
(NDRC, 2005) testing machine are results The advantages and disadvantages of cement concrete toughness
not high regarding bending, impact and fracture toughness are shown in Table 3
below.

S
where KIC (MPa⋅m1/2) is the crack initiation toughness, FHmax (kN) is the
maximum horizontal load, Pmax (kN) is the instability fracture load, αc
(m) is subcritical effective crack length, αc ¼ ahc , ac (m) is the critical
effective fracture length, h0 (m) is the thickness of knife edge thin steel
plate of device clip-type extensometer, Vc (m) is the critical value of crack
4. Conclusions and prospects
The purpose of this review is to discuss the mechanism to improve the
toughness of road concrete and the toughness evaluation methods, to
guide the toughness improvement of cement concrete pavement, and

13
M. Fang et al.
improve the service life of cement concrete pavement, which conforms to
the policy of energy conservation and emission reduction. The main
conclusions are drawn as follows.
(1) The performance of concrete material is mainly determined by its
raw material composition and the internal structure of the
mixture. Improving the toughness of pavement cement concrete
material is essentially a process of improving the internal structure
of concrete, including the improvement of pore structure, lower
porosity, improving the structure of the interface transition zone
and performance, and reducing the internal micro-cracks, micro-
cracks crack damage control and extension.
(2) The toughness of pavement cement concrete can be improved
from two aspects, the composition of concrete material the com-
bination of concrete and admixtures. The concrete material
composition includes the selection of high-toughness cement,
appropriate aggregate particle size, and porosity control. The
admixtures mainly include rubber, fiber and other modified ma-
terials. In general, composite materials improve the toughness of
pavement cement concrete better.
(3) The incorporation amount of rubber and fiber in concrete must be
maintained within a reasonable range to obtain satisfactory
toughness improvement performance of road concrete. The
amount of rubber must not exceed 30% of the volume of fine
aggregate, in general, and the amount of fiber is not more than 2%
of the volume of concrete. A large amount of rubber will signifi-
cantly reduce the strength of concrete, while a large amount of
fiber will lead to the increase of internal defects of concrete and
the increased interface transition zone.
(4) The toughness of pavement concrete material includes bending
toughness, impact toughness, and fracture toughness. Different
concrete evaluation methods must meet the different needs of
road requirements. The toughness of cement concrete for highway
and municipal pavement is generally evaluated by bending and
fracture toughness, while the toughness of airfield pavement
concrete is more focused on impact toughness.
This paper summarizes the toughness improvement mechanism of
cement concrete from three aspects of aggregate, cementitious materials
and admixtures. However, this review work only focused on fiber and
rubber as the admixtures, and the application of high-toughness cement
concrete in the actual road is still facing many challenges. For example,
the synergistic effect of rubber and fiber, the development and applica-
tion of new flexible admixtures, and the formulation of the toughness
index of pavement cement concrete materials still need further study.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors do not have any conflict of interest with other entities or
researchers.
Acknowledgments
This research is financially supported by the Research Program of
China Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group Co., Ltd. (Grant number
2021K066).
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construction material, asphalt-based trackbed, and intelligent
construction.

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