Asphalt Pavements; Their Nature and Desirability

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...

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 ...

Concrete Overlays as a Rehabilitation Option for Distressed Asphalt Pavements

Recommendations for Minimizing Poor Quality Coarse Aggregate in Asphalt Pavements

The Texas Department of Transportation has experienced problems with inconsistent performance of the coarse aggregate fraction of hotmix asphalt pavements. This project was initiated to address problems associated with variations in hotmix coarse aggregate quality. More specifically, the researchers wanted to identify simple tests that can be performed at the aggregate quarries to assess the du...