Identification Of Moisture Damage In Asphalt Mixture Under Environmental Conditions And Mechanical Loading

This dissertation presents an experimental approach and a micromechanicalmodel to identify moisture damage in asphalt mixtures. Damage in asphaltpavement cannot be evaluated without the environmental conditions and the trafficloading. To this end, the diffusion setup was designed to evaluate the diffusivity inan asphalt matrix and Fick’s law was used to determine the diffusion coefficient.The Dynamic Modulus test was conducted to verify some mechanical propertieswhich were the key values to simulating moisture damage in asphalt pavement. Asequentially coupled moisture diffusion and mechanical loading was implementedusing a finite element method in Abaqus to model the progressive damage behaviordue to the moisture transport followed by the mechanical loading. This approachpresents herein results in a degradation function that can help to identify thedamage due to water infiltration. This model can be used to identify the evolutionof damage in the real asphalt pavement in which environmental conditions andtraffic loading change through time.