Abstract
This study investigates the sensitivity of the mechanistic-empirical flexible pavement design performance parameters such as cracking, rutting, and smoothness to mix factors for 11 categories of hot-mix asphalt (HMA) mixtures. For each category of HMA mixture, the variations in the pavement performances for different effective binder content (Vbe), air void (Va), voids-in-mineral aggregates (VMA), voids-filled-with asphalt (VFA), and asphalt content (AC) are examined by the AASHTOWare Pavement Mechanistic-Empirical Design, simply the AASHTOWare software analysis. Five types of distresses: international roughness index (IRI), total rutting, rutting in the HMA layer, bottom-up fatigue cracking, and top-down longitudinal fatigue cracking are considered in the analysis. Results show that the prediction of distresses values after 20-year of service life using the AASHTOWare software may differ by up to 170% for different specimens of a certain mix design. All distresses, except rutting, increase in Va, VMA, and VFA. Rutting in HMA increases with an increase in VMA and VFA, and is insensitive to Vbe, Va, and AC in the study range of these parameters.
Highlights
In the AASHTOWare Pavement Mechanistic-Empirical (ME) design, the AASHTOWare design, the flexible pavement performances such as the fatigue cracking, rutting along the wheelpath, longitudinal cracking, etc., are predicted based on the stress–strains developed in different layers especially at the asphalt layer
The 11 types of mixtures being studied are listed in Table 1 along with their basic information such as nominal maximum aggregate size (NMAS), performance grade (PG) binder type, number of gyrations used while designing the mixes
This study evaluates the effects of mix factors such as voids-in-mineral aggregates (VMA), voids-filled-with asphalt (VFA), effective binder content, contractors, etc. on the pavement preferences
Summary
In the AASHTOWare Pavement Mechanistic-Empirical (ME) design, the AASHTOWare design, the flexible pavement performances such as the fatigue cracking, rutting (permanent deformation) along the wheelpath, longitudinal cracking, etc., are predicted based on the stress–strains developed in different layers especially at the asphalt layer. |E*| helps to define the viscoelastic nature of asphalt by quantifying the effects of temperature and frequency on stiffness under dynamic loading This is necessary to accurately predict the in situ pavement responses to different traffic speeds, and temperatures throughout the pavement’s cross-section. This study focuses on the effect different mix factors have on the performance of asphalt pavement using the AASHTOWare software (Version 2.3.1, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Washington, DC, USA). Different mix factors included in this study are asphalt content (AC), air void (Va ), voids in mineral aggregates (VMA), void-filled with asphalt (VFA), effective binder content (Vbe ), etc. The total asphalt binder content of the mix less the portion of asphalt binder that is lost by absorption into the aggregate is called the effective asphalt content (Vbe ). The main objective of the research is to analyze the effects of AC, Va , VMA, VFA, Vbe , etc., on the pavement performances using the AASHTOWare software
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