Thermal Expansion Coefficient Prediction of Asphalt Mixture with the Eshelby Equivalent Inclusion Theory

Abstract

Asphalt mixture was considered as a two-phase composite, in which coarse aggregates are embedded into asphalt mastic matrix, namely a mix of fine aggregates and asphalt, so that a theoretical framework was proposed to correlate its effective thermal expansion coefficient with its components and microstructures based on the Eshelby equivalent inclusion theory. A four-parameter model with the experimentally determined parameters was used to characterize the viscoelastic constitutive behavior of asphalt mastic. The thermal expansion coefficient prediction of asphalt mixture was conducted and compared with the predictions by the sparse method and the self-consistent method. It was revealed that the prediction from the proposed theoretical framework is reasonable.