Asphalt and Concrete Foot Pavements

Concrete Overlays as a Rehabilitation Option for Distressed Asphalt Pavements

Rut Resistant Asphalt Pavements

The three major distress conditions affecting the performance of asphalt pavements are permanent deformation or rutting, fatigue or load associated cracking, and low temperature or thermal cracking. In an earlier technical topics article (Fall, 1998), we examined the causes of fatigue cracking and the importance of good compaction during construction to help minimize this type of distress. In t...

Comparison of Environmental Implications of Asphalt and Steel-Reinforced Concrete Pavements

The public, industry, and governments have become increasingly interested in green design and sustainable development. Construction activities affect the environment significantly, so environmental issues should be considered seriously. Thousands of miles of roads are paved every year with asphalt and steel-reinforced concrete. What are the environmental effects of the two materials? If asphalt...

Dynamic Hydraulic Conductivity (Permeability) of Asphalt Pavements

External pressures applied to a saturated pavement pore structure are often dynamic due to the repeated tire loading. Therefore, a dynamic permeability constant is more realistic representation of the response of a pavement pore structure than the Darcy’s permeability. To investigate the unsteady (dynamic) fluid flow in asphalt pavements, a 3D fluid flow model was developed using the lattice Bo...

Capturing Solar Energy from Asphalt Pavements

The concept of extracting heat energy from asphalt pavements has been investigated in this study. The scope of work consisted of finite element modeling and testing with small and large scale asphalt pavement samples. Water flowing through copper tubes inserted within asphalt pavements samples were used as heat exchangers in the experiments. The rise in temperature of water as a result of flow ...