Date of Graduation

5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Civil Engineering

Advisor/Mentor

Braham, Andrew

Abstract

Durable pavement is essential for modern transportation infrastructure, especially in the United States of America which boasts over 8.5 million lane miles of roads and highways. Despite advanced construction techniques, asphalt pavements are susceptible to rutting and cracking, significantly affecting their performance and maintenance costs. Current methods for analyzing rutting and cracking in asphalt mixtures rely on various parameters, leading to measurement variability. This highlights the need for more rigorous analysis to explore the relationship between mix design variables and pavement performance. This research explores the IDEAL-CT and APA data from 171 mix designs collected by the Arkansas Department of Transportation. Both mix designs had virgin and recycled asphalt mixtures to compare how the percent recycled asphalt affected the susceptibility of rutting and cracking along with the other variables. To better understand which asphalt mixture properties impact cracking and rutting in the field, box-and-whisker plots, Pearson correlation, Spearman rank correlation, and Kendall’s Tau analysis methods were used. After running these analysis methods, the CTIndex for virgin mixtures had a correlation of 0.29 with the voids filled with asphalt, while the CTIndex for RAP mixtures had a correlation of 0.48 with the theoretical maximum specific gravity. The rut depth correlated heavily with the upper performance grade for both virgin and recycled mixtures. The virgin mixtures had a value of -0.62 while the recycled mixtures had an even higher value of -0.71. Interestingly, other variables that affected rutting and cracking were the bulk specific gravity and voids filled with mineral aggregate. The outcome of this research contributes valuable insight into the key factors affecting the asphalt mixture performance and allows other owners to examine how their asphalt mixture properties impact their own performance tests.

Keywords

Asphalt Pavement; Deformation; Cracking; Key Factors; Mixtures

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