Universal Method to Measure Water Infiltration into Asphalt Pavements Independent of Pavement Preservation Surface Treatment

Abstract

In recent years, greater focus has been placed on pavement preservation treatments, where one of the primary goals is to seal an existing pavement (especially cracks) to preserve it from further oxidation (i.e. decrease its permeability). The industry needs the ability to measure the effectiveness of these surface treatments; a single universal method that could be used for this purpose would be ideal, especially if traditional asphalt pavement surfaces could also be evaluated or field and laboratory measurements successfully related. This paper’s objective is to present a simple permeameter device, the Mississippi permeameter (MSP), for measuring water infiltration into asphalt pavements independent of the surface (e.g. dense-graded asphalt (DGA), chip seal). In this paper, the MSP was evaluated against traditional field and laboratory permeameters (e.g. NCAT permeameter) on a range of surfaces from open-graded friction course (most permeable) to DGA (most common) to chip and scrub seals (least permeable, roughest texture, most difficult to measure). The MSP provided measurements as reasonable as those of existing permeameters and was also successfully used to test chip and scrub sealed cracks, which is beyond existing permeameters’ abilities. Additional refinements are needed for relating field and laboratory measurements, but the MSP concept appears promising and worth pursuing given the increasing pavement preservation focus.