Evaluation of Critical Pavement Responses from Accelerated Pavement Testing on Airfield Flexible Pavements Surfaced with Hot and Warm Mix Asphalt

Abstract

Highway agencies frequently use warm mix additives as compaction aids. Lower production temperature of the warm mixes simultaneously entails the benefit of widening the paving window. Airport authorities can ensure significant fiscal savings with reduced downtime through the adoption of similar technologies in airfield paving. However, limited scientific information exists concerning the performance of these materials in airside flexible pavements. Aircraft gross weights and tire pressures have also been routinely increasing over the last few decades with the advent of new-generation aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) procured a sixth-generation heavy vehicle simulator, airfields (HVS-A) to investigate the performances of resilient pavement materials under simulated aircraft loading. Accordingly, six full-scale test lanes were constructed during Test Cycle 1 (TC1) at FAA’s National Airport Pavement and Materials Research Center (NAPMRC) using four different asphalt concrete (AC) mixes with two different binder grades. Each test lane was divided into three test sections. Asphalt strain gauges and pressure cells were installed in the test sections to monitor the critical pavement responses over the duration of traffic tests. Corresponding test sections were trafficked under different combinations of high tire pressure and temperature. This paper examines the tensile strains at the bottom of AC and compressive stresses on top of the subgrade in reference to the observed rutting performances in four TC1 outdoor test lanes. The respective hot and warm mixes exhibited comparable rutting performances, and the sensor observations corroborated the related findings.

Keywords

warm mix asphalt heavy vehicle simulator airfields National Airport Pavement and Materials Research Center tensile strain

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