Abstract
This paper investigates the effects of air void topology on hydraulic conductivity in asphalt mixtures with porosity in the range 14%–31%. Virtual asphalt pore networks were generated using the Intersected Stacked Air voids (ISA) method, with its parameters being automatically adjusted by the means of a differential evolution optimisation algorithm, and then 3D printed using transparent resin. Permeability tests were conducted on the resin samples to understand the effects of pore topology on hydraulic conductivity. Moreover, the pore networks generated virtually were compared to real asphalt pore networks captured via X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) scans. The optimised ISA method was able to generate realistic 3D pore networks corresponding to those seen in asphalt mixtures in term of visual, topological, statistical and air void shape properties. It was found that, in the range of porous asphalt materials investigated in this research, the high dispersion in hydraulic conductivity at constant air void content is a function of the average air void diameter. Finally, the relationship between average void diameter and the maximum aggregate size and gradation in porous asphalt materials was investigated.
Highlights
Asphalt pavements with porosity ranging between 15% and 26% have complex pore networks that can drain water [1]
A range of pore space of porous asphalt samples were generated using a virtual air pore generator optimized by differential evolution (DE) algorithm and 3D printed in resin blocks
The permeability test was conducted on the 3D samples to understand the effect of pore topology such as average void diameter on the hydraulic conductivity
Summary
Asphalt pavements with porosity ranging between 15% and 26% have complex pore networks that can drain water [1]. The high similarity between the real and computationallygenerated samples curves indicates that the ISA method optimised via DE is a suitable approach to generate asphalt pore macrostructures with realistic features.
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