Evaluation of Superpave mixtures for perpetual asphalt pavements

Early deterioration of flexible pavements, due to increased traffic volume, environmental conditions, poor maintenance and construction quality, causes difficulties to road users, all around the world. The structural failures such as fatigue and rutting demand the reconstruction of the pavements which further leads to significant construction cost. One potentially sustainable solution to this problem is to adopt perpetual pavement technology. The fatigue and rutting distresses in the pavements can be minimised to some extent by utilising Superpave mixtures with perpetual pavement concept. This paper proposes two polymer-modified Superpave mixtures, one with optimum amount of binder and the other with rich binder content, for the asphalt intermediate and base layers of perpetual pavement, respectively. The optimum mixtures were prepared with two aggregate gradations having nominal maximum aggregate sizes 25 mm and 19 mm for the intermediate layers to enhance the rutting resistance. Rich mixtures were prepared with the same gradations for the asphalt base layer to improve the fatigue resistance. Laboratory tests were conducted on these mixtures to determine moisture susceptibility, rutting resistance, fatigue behaviour and resilient modulus. The fatigue and rutting criteria of perpetual pavement sections were evaluated using KENPAVE software and the critical strains were found to be within the limits. The experimental results and analysis on perpetual pavement sections with proposed mixtures for the intermediate and base layers show that they can be considered as a better alternative for conventional pavements.