Abstract
The damage of asphalt concrete pavement (AC pavement) structure caused by reflection crack is an urgent problem in many areas of China, especially in cold regions of China, so it is necessary to study how to reduce the reflective cracking and prevent the AC pavement structures cracking. The acoustic emission (AE) information is fetched in this paper to study the AE characteristics of pavement structures and the crack propagation law inside the system. On the above basis, cracks with crack spacing/layer thickness values of 1.25, 2.5, 3.75, and 5 were prefabricated in the foundation course by the numerical simulation method. The models with different foundation course crack spacing were calculated by Realistic Failure Process Analysis finite element software. The influence of varying crack spacing on the propagation mechanism of reflective cracks in the foundation course structure was studied. The results show that the AC pavement structure has prominent AE characteristics. The faster the cooling rate is, the more serious the damage to the AC pavement surface is. In addition, with the increase of crack spacing/layer thickness value, the stress level between cracks increases continuously. Most of the stress will make the cracks expand toward the foundation course structure, and only a tiny part of stress is used to form reflective cracks. In practical engineering, it is suggested to increase the crack resistance of foundation course materials and preset some small spacing cracks in the large spacing cracks in the foundation course.
Highlights
In southwestern China, the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau and its surrounding areas are mainly alpine regions with a wide area (Liang et al, 2020; Duan et al, 2021)
acoustic emission (AE) technology has been widely used in concrete materials and concrete bridges, and many AE analyses have been carried out (Nair and Cai, 2010; Behnia et al, 2014; Jiao et al, 2020), as well as the use of AE to study the cracking of mixtures (Li et al, 2006; Behnia et al, 2018; Xu et al, 2018; Yang et al, 2021a)
We found that the cumulative AE hits of the asphalt concrete (AC) pavement structure under different cooling conditions are within a broad range
Summary
In southwestern China, the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau and its surrounding areas are mainly alpine regions with a wide area (Liang et al, 2020; Duan et al, 2021). The influences of different S/T values on reflection crack propagation (S/T represents the ratio of crack spacing to surface thickness) are studied later to find ways to reduce the probability of reflection crack formation and reduce the damage degree of the asphalt pavement structure. With the stop of temperature loading, the overall cumulative number of AE has reached a fixed level It can be seen from the figure that with the increase of crack spacing, the cumulative amount of AE of the whole pavement structure will decrease. We can draw a particular initial determination that the overall AC pavement structure is more prone to damage with increased crack spacing in the foundation course under the uniform cooling effect. The damage degree of the surface layer in the overall pavement structure is low
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