Increasing Asphalt Pavement Density Through Mixture Design: A Field Project

摘要

Modifying the asphalt mixture design appears to be a viable method for obtaining improvements in pavement durability. This paper reports a demonstration project focused on achieving an optimal 95% in-place density through a modified mixture design. The project tasks included milling and overlaying an existing pavement in Indiana. Control and test mixtures were used to evaluate the effect of mixture design modifications on the asphalt pavement construction performance. The control mixture was designed in the laboratory at 4% air voids using the conventional Superpave volumetric mixture design method. In contrast, the test mixture was prepared at 5% air voids using a modified laboratory mixture design. Quality control and quality assurance data analysis reported a 93.3% and 95.3% in-place density average for the control mixture and test mixture, respectively. Additionally, new probabilistic and analytical metrics are proposed to compare the construction performance of both mixtures. The findings of this field study validate the potential benefits of using a modified mixture design to construct asphalt pavements with increased densities. Implementation of this methodology can be easily accomplished using conventional laboratory and construction equipment.