Dynamic stiffness analysis of asphalt mixtures for nondestructive pavement performance assessment

Abstract

Ground-based Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) has been developed as an effective tool for non-invasiveness pavement performance assessment. It is well known that asphalt pavement properties such as density and void content are important parameters that directly affect pavement quality and durability. The dynamic stiffness method is an innovative NDT testing technique which measures dynamic response of the material. In this work, laboratory experimental data about the dynamic stiffness are collected by standardized tests on laboratory Marshall cylindrical bituminous samples. The method performs the analysis of the sinusoidal excitation spectrum (frequency and amplitude) in two random and continuous sweep signals. Both signal are compared for the determination of the bulk density and air void content of the asphalt mixtures. The results show that, by using the dynamic stiffness test, it is possible to generate models with high accuracy in determining the densities and void contents of different bituminous mixtures. Therefore, this method can be potentially considered as an effective non-invasiveness tool for evaluating pavement quality and durability. This research paves the way for the development of a novel procedure introducing several advances implementing a ground-based Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) method based on "dynamic stiffness" for a more effective assets monitoring focused on road pavements.