An experimental and numerical study of asphaltic concrete under tropical environments

Abstract

The asphaltic concrete is an essential material for flexible pavement construction. Its behaviour is however so complicated, especially the behaviour depended on the change of temperature and/or stain rate. The pavement design of Thailand has been still based on the standard of foreign countries. In fact most of them were created and developed based on the database observed under their environments. Those databases and methods from foreign countries may not be suitable to the condition of Thailand thereby this research focuses on the asphaltic concrete behaviour under the various temperatures and the changing rates which relate to the environment in the tropical countries such as Thailand. This study consists of two main parts which are to study the asphaltic concrete behaviour based on the laboratory test and to analyse the test result and then to model the asphaltic concrete behaviour. The former is composed of four tests which are the static and the cyclic indirect tensile tests and the static and the cyclic unconfined compress tests. All test results are analysed using the conventional pavement engineering method such as analyses result employing the time-temperature superposition. By all results of analysis they can be next used to produce the database for the road design in Thailand. The later studied the behaviour of asphaltic concrete can be used to validate the constitutive model based on the hyperplasticsity theory. The main feature of this theory is that it enables to define the constitutive law by setting the potential energy equation and the flow potential equation. This constitutive model also relies on the kinematic hardening plasticity and the rate-dependent plasticity principle. Following this study both the model and the parameters can be future benefits to numerical application in the pavement analysis and design.