New evaluating method and case study of thermal stability for asphalt pavement functional paving materials

Abstract In order to solve the evaluation difficulty of high temperature stability of pavement functional coatings, this research started from the generation mechanism of high temperature failure of functional coatings, and deeply analyzed the principle of high temperature stability evaluation. The wheel track distribution of pavement coating was designed and the coating modules under different rutting action were divided. By analyzing the migration and geometrical changes of the coatings and the partial modules, the key evaluation indices of high temperature stability were proposed, and the classification basis of high temperature stability was determined. On this basis, the high-temperature stability evaluations of commonly used pavement coatings were performed by using this evaluation method. Combined with the rutting test, the accuracy and correlation of high-temperature stability evaluation for pavement coatings was verified. Results showed as follows: i. By the coupling of high temperature and vehicle load, this method could precisely evaluate and analyze the weight migration and geometrical changes of pavement coatings. ii. The method incorporated high temperature viscous loss into the high temperature stability evaluation of pavement coatings effectively. iii. The result of regression analysis indicated that the rutting test results were linearly related to the high temperature stability evaluation results obtained by this method, which revealed that the evaluation method proposed in this paper could achieve scientific and accurate evaluation of the high temperature stability of pavement coating.