An Analytical Approach to Estimate the Rheological Properties of Asphalt Binders Using Mixture Properties

摘要

The importance of rheological properties of bituminous materials has grown in the US sinceearly 1990’s following the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP). These rheologicalproperties are now commonly used in materials specifications and are used as input to theMechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG). Therefore, an approach of usingpredictive models to estimate the rheological properties of the bituminous materials accuratelywould be useful for the pavement design. In this study, a modeling approach is proposed whichis based on fundamental viscoelastic principles. To establish the models, a large data set that wasobtained from multiple existing national efforts from numerous locations across the UnitedStates was used. The database consists of measured modulus values from mixtures with modifiedand unmodified binders, and mixtures having various amounts of reclaimed asphalt pavement(RAP). As a result, two predictive models were developed to estimate the binder shear modulusand phase angle given the desired physical and mechanical properties of asphalt mixtures. Thesemodels can be used for a wide range of temperatures (covering -10° up to 54.4°C) that arerecommended in the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials(AASHTO) TP62-03 test protocol. The predictive capabilities of the newly developed modelswere evaluated using different data sets with various types of mixtures. It is believed that theaforementioned findings of this study can lead to enhance the knowledge of rheologicalproperties of binders in RAP mixtures at intermediate and high temperatures without the need toextract the binders from mixture.