Design Method of Asphalt Pavement Mixture Based on Performance Balance Approach

Abstract

In China, a large number of on-site investigations on the service conditions of asphalt pavements show that cracking has gradually become one of the most serious problems besides rutting. Part of the reason is that, in the past, most of the attention has been on the problem of preventing asphalt pavement rutting at the design stage, and the technical requirements for cracking resistance and rutting resistance of asphalt pavement materials contradict each other, resulting in the imbalanced performance of the designed pavement mixture. To solve this problem, this research proposes a new method for designing asphalt pavement surface material based on the order relation method and the performance balance approach. By testing the dynamic stability, flexural strain, splitting strength ratio under freeze-thawing cycles, and the fatigue properties of asphalt mixture under different mixing ratios, a reasonable range of asphalt-aggregate ratio is determined. Combined with the weight coefficients of the road performance indices corresponding to the specific pavement distress, the optimal asphalt-aggregate ratio of each index is investigated, and the optimal asphalt-aggregate ratio is obtained through comparison. The results show that, compared with the traditional Marshall design method, the high-temperature stability of the asphalt mixture using the new mix design method is slightly reduced, but the low-temperature performance, water stability, and fatigue life have been significantly improved, indicating the advantages of the performance balance approach in the design of the asphalt pavement material mixture.