Proposed Method to Determine the Flow Number in Bituminous Mixtures from Repeated Axial Load Tests
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 133, Issue 11
Abstract
Researchers report the number of cycles corresponding to the lower strain rate in a permanent deformation test, known as flow number (FN), as a good asphalt mix stability indicator; however, its variability has limited its implementation. Current procedures for calculating FN rely on data smoothing techniques, which can yield very different values for the same specimen if different moving average periods are used. A new methodology for determining FN is proposed by modeling the permanent strain versus load cycles curve as a continuous function. Data from cold-mix replicate samples were analyzed and compared, and a substantial reduction in FN variability was observed using the proposed methodology. Use of FN to select the data to determine the power model parameters was also evaluated. Results indicate that establishing FN as the upper cut-off point of the data used to fit the power-model produces a slight reduction in parameter estimates variability. Adopting the proposed model could be useful for permanent deformation characterization and as a unifying criterion for selecting the data used for that purpose.
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Acknowledgments
The writers would like to thank the Gas Technology Institute for providing the funds to perform the laboratory permanent deformation tests used in this study.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 133 • Issue 11 • November 2007
Pages: 610 - 617
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Dec 12, 2006
Accepted: Apr 18, 2007
Published online: Nov 1, 2007
Published in print: Nov 2007
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