Extended Life Hot Mix Asphalt Pavement (ELHMAP) Test Sections at ATREL

摘要

Project IHR-R39, titled Validation of Design Concepts for Extended Life Hot Mix Asphalt Pavements (ELHMAP), was funded by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to develop data in support of the philosophy of design and performance of the newly proposed concept of Perpetual Pavements (PP). The concept of a PP was to have a rut resistant surface, a fatigue-resistant asphalt rich lower layer, and sufficient total thickness to eliminate the development of fatigue cracking. The IDOT vision of this concept was to have a rut-resistant surface layer, an intermediate layer of a typical IDOT mix, and a lower layer that may or may not need to be asphalt rich. The total thickness would produce a tensile strain at the bottom of the asphalt layers that is below 70 micro strain during the hottest period of the year. Because this philosophy is a significant deviation from current design principles, and with the introduction of the new Superpave mixes, a significant part of this project was to construct full-scale pavement sections representative of the ELHMAP design approach that could be tested for response variables under Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) and full-scale wheel loads. This report details the construction and composition of the sections of various thicknesses over aggregate subbase and lime-modified subgrade.