Performance-based asphalt mixture design methodology.

摘要

Today, several State D.O.T.s are being investigating the use of tire rubber with local conventional materials. Several of the ongoing investigations identified potential benefits from the use of these materials, including improvements in material properties and performance. One of the major problems is being associated with the transferability of asphalt rubber technology without appropriately considering the effects of the variety of conventional materials on mixture behavior and performance. Typically, the design of these mixtures is being adapted to the physical properties of the conventional materials by using the empirical Marshall mixture design and without considering fundamental mixture behavior and performance.; Use of design criteria related to the most common modes of failure for asphalt mixtures, such as rutting, fatigue cracking, and low temperature thermal cracking have to be developed and used for identifying the "best mixture," in term of performance, for the specific local materials and loading conditions. The main objective of this study was the development of a mixture design methodology that considers mixture behavior and performance. In order to achieve this objective a laboratory investigation able to evaluate mixture properties that can be related to mixture performance, (in terms of rutting, low temperature cracking, moisture damage and fatigue), and simulating the actual field loading conditions that the material is being exposed to, was conducted. The results proved that the inclusion of rubber into asphalt mixtures improved physical characteristics such as elasticity, flexibility, rebound, aging properties, increased fatigue resistance, and reduced rutting potential. The possibility of coupling the traditional Marshall mix design method with parameters related to mixture behavior and performance was investigated. Also, the SHRP SUPERPAVE mix design methodology was reviewed and considered in this study for the development of an integrated performance based design procedure. Finally, the developed guidelines with easy-to-use flow charts for the integrated mix design methodology are presented.