Further Investigation on Damage Model of Eco-Friendly Basalt Fiber Modified Asphalt Mixture under Freeze-Thaw Cycles

Wensheng Wang,Shuting Yang,Xun Sun,Guirong Ma,Guojin Tan,Yongchun Cheng

doi:10.3390/app9010060

Abstract

The main distresses of asphalt pavements in seasonally frozen regions are due to the effects of water action, freeze-thaw cycles, and so on. Basalt fiber, as an eco-friendly mineral fiber with high mechanical performance, has been adopted to reinforce asphalt mixture in order to improve its mechanical properties. This study investigated the freeze-thaw damage characteristics of asphalt mixtures reinforced with eco-friendly basalt fiber by volume and mechanical properties—air voids, splitting tensile strength, and indirect tensile stiffness modulus tests. Test results indicated that asphalt mixtures reinforced with eco-friendly basalt fiber had better mechanical properties (i.e., splitting tensile strength and indirect tensile stiffness modulus) before and after freeze-thaw cycles. Furthermore, this study developed logistic damage models of asphalt mixtures in terms of the damage characteristics, and found that adding basalt fiber could significantly reduce the damage degree by about 25%, and slow down the damage grow rate by about 45% compared with control group without basalt fiber. Moreover, multi-variable grey models (GM) (1,N) were established for modelling the damage characteristics of asphalt mixtures under the effect of freeze-thaw cycles. GM (1,3) was proven as an effective prediction model to perform better in prediction accuracy compared to GM (1,2).

Highlights

Asphalt pavement has been widely used in flexible pavement constructions in a rapidly growing trend [1,2,3,4]
The freeze-thaw damage can be characterized by air voids (VA) for the volume parameter, splitting tensile strength (STS), and indirect tensile stiffness modulus (ITSM) for mechanical parameters
The VA, STS, and ITSM of asphalt mixture (AM) and basalt fiber modified asphalt mixture (BFAM) varying with freeze-thaw cycles are plotted in Figure 5a,c,e, and the corresponding damage degree results are shown in Figure 5b,d,f, in which the logistic models are expressed in curves with uncertain data

Summary

Introduction

Asphalt pavement has been widely used in flexible pavement constructions in a rapidly growing trend [1,2,3,4]. Asphalt mixtures are generally considered complex porous materials including asphalt, aggregates, and filler, as well as voids [5,6,7]. Due to some environmental factors, there are many distresses in asphalt pavements such as spalling, crumbling, pavement potholes, etc., especially in seasonally frozen regions [8,9,10]. Researchers have been trying to modify asphalt mixture and explore its freeze-thaw damage

Methods

Results

Conclusion