Cooling Curve Prediction of Asphaltic Concrete

Abstract

During cold wealther periods, asphalt concrete highway construction is frequently postponed because the hot asphalt concrete cools too rapidly for proper compaction to take place. If the cooling rates and asphalt concrete temperatures for hot asphalt could be predicted as a function of time, then construction on many cold weather days could proceed when construction would otherwise be prohibited. A simple predictive method is available on a hand‐held Hewlett‐Packard 97 programmable calculator. The research reported in this paper tests the predictive method by comparing predicted temperatures with measured temperatures under both laboratory and field conditions. The predictive method proves satisfactory for predicting cooling curves up to 20 min. Reported also are the laboratory measures of thermophysical properties of typical asphalt concrete and base materials encountered in Ohio.