Micromechanical Simulation of Indirect Tension Test of Asphalt Concrete with Computerized Tomography Identification

Digital Image Processing (DIP) is applied to convert Computerized Tomography (CT) images into digital forms that can be incorporated into finite element modeling. Virtual Indirect Tension Test by taking into account the actual inhomogeneities and microstructures, is used to analysis mechanical behavior of asphalt concrete, with the visco-elastic properties of the sand mastic and elastic properties of the aggregates are inputted into the FEM model. The numerical results show that the material inhomogeneities and voids distributions can have significant effects on the tensile stress distribution along the loading axis of the sample and the coarse aggregates skeleton has greater influence on mechanical properties of asphalt concrete and the proposed method can be extended to predict the mixture behavior based on ingredient properties.