Benefits and Applications of Utilizing Agency Asphalt Mixture Design Historical Records

Advancement of the practice of building sustainable highway networks can be furthered by effective use of historical records. To this end, this paper presents analysis of a historical record of approved asphalt mixture designs maintained by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. Distributions of mixture properties are analyzed and discussed, and properties of the reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) materials in the dataset are compared with total asphalt mixture properties. The data highlights the materials diversity that occurs within the jurisdiction of an agency. Benefits and applications of such an analysis of historical records are discussed. Applications for the data include re-using RAP in plant mixed asphalt, in-place recycling, and educating the next generation of pavement materials engineers. The data collection and analysis techniques are straightforward, easy to perform, and low cost, while the potential benefits to an agency are high.