Evaluation of Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) Technologies for Use in Airport Pavements

Abstract

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) currently does not allow use of warm mix asphalt (WMA) on Airport Improvement Program (AIP) funded airport runway and taxiway pavement projects due to the lack of pavement performance data under heavy aircraft loads on WMA. FAA’s National Airport Pavement and Materials Research Center (NAPMRC) was established to evaluate performance of new asphalt material technologies under heavy aircraft loading at high pavement temperatures. As part of Test Cycle 2 (TC2), six test lanes were constructed – four outdoors and two indoors, each encompassing three different test sections. In outdoor lanes, three different WMA additives (chemical, waxy, and hybrid) were used in Lanes 2, 3, and 4 respectively. Lane-1 is the control section with FAA standard P401 specification hot mix asphalt (HMA). Heavy weight deflectometer (HWD) tests were performed on the constructed test lanes to characterize the pavements. Extensive laboratory tests are planned on WMA’s and HMA (field cores and loose mixes). The test lanes will be subjected to accelerated pavement tests (APT) using custom designed airport heavy vehicle simulator (HVS-A) to study rutting performance (at high pavement temperatures) and fatigue behavior. This paper will present construction of test lanes, asphalt mix designs, results from HWD tests on test lanes, and results from response tests on test lanes.