Internal Structure Features of Asphalt Mixture for Field Samples

Asphalt mixture is heterogeneous in nature; therefore, macroscopic parameters alone cannot describe the mechanical behavior of the mixture. In recent years, the arrangement of the aggregate particles in terms of spatial and directional distributions, and contact points are considered as the internal structure of asphalt. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the microstructural characteristics of asphalt cores using 2-D images. Comparison between the internal structure features in the laboratory samples and the Field samples is shown in this paper. The results show that the survey of microstructural characteristics of asphalt cores by image processing provides new and useful information. This finding indicates that the number of contact points in cores is close to the lab samples that have been made at 45 to 65 blows on each end of the sample.