Thermal insulation of flexible pavements utilizing foam glass aggregates to mitigate frost action in cold regions — Development of design tools

Abstract

This manuscript focuses on the use of foam glass aggregates (FGAs) as insulator to protect pavements against frost action. The ultimate objective of the paper was to develop design tools for the thermal design of pavements insulated with FGAs. A mathematical model was outlined to describe the complex thermal behavior of FGAs and calculate temperature levels within a domain representing a pavement insulated with FGAs. The formulation is based on the one-dimensional heat equation which was discretized with a forward finite-difference technique and subsequently coded in Fortran90. This code was executed to successfully replicate temperature measurements collected within an experimental pavement insulated with FGAs, enabling the validation of the model. The model was then re-executed to perform three different sensitivity analyses and investigate the effects of the pavement geometry, layers humidity, and FGAs’ effective particle size on the maximal frost front penetration. Compared to a pavement without insulation, utilizing FGAs reduced the maximal frost front depth. The sensitivity analyses were summarized in design charts to guide the utilization of FGAs for the thermal design of pavements. The code utilized to generate these charts is freely available on GitHub.