Flexible pavements are subjected to three main distress types: fatigue crack, thermal crack, and permanent deformation. Under severe climate conditions, thermal cracking particularly contributes largely to a considerable scale of premature deterioration of pavement infrastructure worldwide. This challenge is especially relevant for Europe, as weather conditions vary significantly throughout the year. Hydrated lime (HL) has been recognized as an effective additive to improve the mechanical properties of asphalt concrete for pavement applications. Previous research has found that a replacement of conventional limestone dust filler using hydrated lime at 2.5% of the total weight of aggregates generated an optimum improvement in the mec

Moisture-induced damage is a serious problem that severely impairs asphaltic pavement and affects road serviceability. This study examined numerous variables in asphalt concrete mixtures to assess their impact on moisture damage resistance. Mix design parameters such as the asphalt content (AC) and aggregate passing sieve No. 4 (PNo. 4) were considered as variables during this study. Additionally, hydrated lime (HL) was utilized as a partial substitute for limestone dust (LS) filler at 1.5% by weight of the aggregate in asphalt concrete mixtures for the surface layer. This study also investigated the potential enhancement of traditional asphalt binders and mixtures by adding nano-additives, specifically nano-silica oxide (NS) and na

Tensile strength is a critical property of Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) pavements and is closely related to distresses such as fatigue cracking. This study aims to evaluate methods for assessing fatigue cracking in Asphalt Concrete (AC) mixes. In order to achieve optimum density at different binder contents, the mixes were compressed using a gyratory compactor. Tensile strength was assessed using the Indirect Tensile (IDT) and Semi-Circular Bend (SCB) tests. The results showed that the tensile strength measured by the SCB test was consistently higher than that measured by the IDT test at 25 °C. In addition, the SCB test showed a stronger correlation between increasing binder content and tensile strength. For binder contents ranging from 4

Modified asphalt is considered one of the alternatives to address the problems of deficiencies in traditional asphalt concrete, as modified asphalt addresses many of the issues that appear on the pavement layers in asphalt concrete, resulting from heavy traffic and vehicles loaded with loads that exceed the design loads and the large fluctuations in the daily and seasonal temperatures of asphalt concrete. The current study examined the role of polyphosphoric acid (PPA) as a modified material for virgin asphalt when it was added in different proportions (1%, 2%, 3%, 4%) of the asphalt weight. The experimental program includes the volumetric characteristics associated with the Marshall test, the physical properties, and th

The action of high repeated trucks load associated with dramatically elevated ambient temperatures leads to the most harmful distress in asphalt pavements occurred in Iraq known as rutting. Essentially, it is produced from the accumulation of irrecoverable strains, which mainly occurred in the asphalt layers. That visually demonstrated as a longitudinal depression in the wheel paths as well as small upheavals to the sides. Poly Phosphoric Acid (PPA) has been used as a means of producing modified asphalt binders and the interest to use it has increased in recent years. The PPA provides modified asphalt binder, which is relatively cheaply produced compared to polymer-modified asphalt. In this paper, PPA was used by three-percentages 1

In the 1980s, the French Administration Roads LCPC developed high modulus mixtures (EME) by using hard binder. This type of mixture presented good resistance to moisture damage and improved mechanical properties for asphalt mixtures including high modulus, good fatigue behaviour and excellent resistance to rutting. In Iraq, this type of mixture has not been used yet. The main objective of this research is to evaluate the performance of high modulus mixtures and comparing them with the conventional mixture, to achieve this objective, asphalt concrete mixes were prepared and then tested to evaluate their engineering properties which include moisture damage, resilient modulus, permanent deformation and fatigue characteristics. These pro

In the recent years, some of the newly constructed asphalt concrete pavements in Baghdad as well as other cities across Iraq showed premature failures with consequential negative impact on both roadway safety and economy. Frequently, load associated mode of failure (rutting and fatigue) as well as, occasionally, moisture damage in some poorly drained sections are the main failure types found in those newly constructed road.

In this research, hydrated lime was introduced into asphalt concrete mixtures of wearing course in two methods. The first one was the addition of dry lime on dry aggregate and the second one was the addition of dry lime on saturated surface dry aggregate moisturized by 2.0 to 3.0 percent of wa

The study investigated the behaviour of asphalt concrete mixes for aggregate gradations, according to the Iraqi specification using the Bailey method designed by an Excel spreadsheet. In mixing aggregates with varying gradations (coarse and fine aggregate), The Bailey method is a systematic methodology that offers aggregate interlocking as the backbone of the framework and a controlled gradation to complete the blends. Six types of gradation are used according to the bailey method considered in this study. Two-course prepared Asphalt Concrete Wearing and Asphalt Concrete binder, the Nominal Maximum Aggregate Sizes (NMAS) of the mixtures are 19 and 12.5 mm, respectively. The total number of specimens was 240 for both layers (15 samp

The distress of moisture induced damage in flexible pavement received tremendous attention over the past decades. The harmful effects of this distress expand the deterioration of other known distresses such as rutting and fatigue cracking. This paper focused on the efficiency of using the waste material of demolished concrete to prepare asphalt mixtures that can withstand the effect of moisture in the pavement. For this purpose, different percentages of waste demolished concrete (0, 10, 20, 30, 50, 70 and 100) were embedded as a replacement for coarse aggregate to construct the base course. The optimum asphalt contents were determined depending on the Marshall method. Then after, two parameters were founded to evaluate the moisture