Three-Dimensional Microstructural-Based Discrete Element Viscoelastic Modeling of Creep Compliance Tests for Asphalt Mixtures
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 23, Issue 1
Abstract
Microstructural-based discrete element (DE) models have been used for a better understanding of asphalt pavement concrete since the late 1990s. Most current studies have been done with two-dimensional (2D) models. Moreover, elastic models are primarily employed for simulation of an asphalt matrix’s time-dependent behaviors. A 2D model is too simple to capture the complex microstructure of asphalt concrete, and an elastic model is not sufficient for simulating an asphalt matrix’s viscoelastic behaviors. Therefore, it is necessary to consider a three-dimensional (3D) viscoelastic model for microstructural-based DE simulation of asphalt mixture behaviors. Currently, it is easy to build such a 3D microstructural-based DE viscoelastic model using the existing techniques presented in the previous studies. A major challenge, however, is to reduce the computation time to run the 3D microstructural-based DE viscoelastic modeling process which is extremely time-consuming. The primary objective of this paper is to simulate and analyze creep responses of an asphalt mixture with a 3D microstructural-based DE viscoelastic model. A key task in this study is to develop an approach to reduce the computation time with the time-temperature superposition principle. Using this developed approach, creep compliance tests of an asphalt mixture under temperatures of 0, −10, and , were simulated with a microstructural-based DE viscoelastic model. Additionally, a DE elastic model was also employed and compared with the viscoelastic model. It was observed that (1) the computation time was reduced to several hours from several decades and (2) the DE viscoelastic model, the DE elastic model, and the experimental measurements yielded similar results.
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Acknowledgments
This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF0701264. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the writers’ and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The writers acknowledge the valuable discussions with Dr. William G. Buttlar at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. The writers are grateful for the assistance from Dr. Buttlar and Mr. Minkyum Kim in the preparation for laboratory testing at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 23 • Issue 1 • January 2011
Pages: 79 - 87
Copyright
© 2011 ASCE.
History
Received: Aug 3, 2009
Accepted: Dec 30, 2009
Published online: Feb 5, 2010
Published in print: Jan 2011
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