Contributions to an Improved Oxygen and Thermal Transport Model and Development of Fatigue Analysis Software for Asphalt Pavements
Abstract
Fatigue cracking is one primary distress in asphalt pavements, dominant especially in later years of service. Prediction of mixture fatigue resistance is critical for various applications, e.g., pavement design and preventative maintenance. The goal of this work was to develop a tool for prediction of binder aging level and mixture fatigue life in pavement from unaged binder/mixture properties. To fulfill this goal, binder oxidation during the early fast-rate period must be understood. In addition, a better hourly air temperature model is required to provide accurate input for the pavement temperature prediction model. Furthermore, a user-friendly software needs to be developed to incorporate these findings. Experiments were conducted to study the carbonyl group formation in one unmodified binder (SEM 64-22) and one polymer-modified binder (SEM 70-22), aged at five elevated temperatures. Data of SEM 64-22, especially at low temperatures, showed support for a parallel-reaction model, one first order reaction and one zero order reaction. The model did not fit data of SEM 70-22. The polymer modification of SEM 70-22 might be responsible for this discrepancy. Nonetheless, more data are required to draw a conclusion. Binder oxidation rate is highly temperature dependent. Hourly air temperature data are required as input for the pavement temperature prediction model. Herein a new pattern-based air temperature model was developed to estimate hourly data from daily data. The pattern is obtained from time series analysis of measured data. The new model yields consistently better results than the conventional sinusoidal model. The pavement aging and fatigue analysis (PAFA) software developed herein synthesizes new findings from this work and constant-rate binder oxidation and hardening kinetics and calibrated mechanistic approach with surface energy (CMSE) fatigue analysis algorithm from literature. Input data include reaction kinetics parameters, mixture test results, and pavement temperature. Carbonyl area growth, dynamic shear rheometer (DSR) function hardening, and mixture fatigue life decline are predicted as function of time. Results are plotted and saved in spreadsheets.