United States Department of Transportation
i
Validating a Density-Profiling System for Asphalt Compaction Assessment
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2024-08-01
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[PDF-3.41 MB]
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Abstract:Highway agencies are demonstrating significant interest in enhancing the quality assurance of asphalt pavement compaction by initiating the Transportation Pooled Fund project TPF-5(443). This pooled fund explores a nondestructive testing technology known as the density-profiling system (DPS). Currently, compaction assessment relies on field coring, which is invasive and time-consuming, or nuclear gauges, which offer spot evaluations of paving surfaces. However, the DPS uses air-coupled, ground-penetrating radar to provide continuous measurements for compaction assessment, which promises quicker data acquisition and broader coverage of paving surfaces. DPS technology holds great potential for advancing the current practice of compaction assessment for hot mix asphalt (HMA) pavements. In collaboration with the Transportation Pooled Fund Program project TPF-5(443), the FHWA’s Nondestructive Evaluation Program independently evaluates and validates DPS technology. This study examines the impact of temperature and moisture on DPS measurements. Furthermore, this study conducts an analytical investigation to understand the scanning boundary of DPS measurements. The analytical results demonstrated that DPS measurements are sensitive to a thin layer beneath the pavement surface. The report also documents how the edge effect affects measurements when DPS is used on laboratory HMA samples. The findings confirm the presence of measurement errors attributed to the edge effect. Consequently, the study proposes practical solutions to effectively mitigate these errors. Additionally, this study evaluates various models to correlate dielectric measurements obtained by DPS to the density information of laboratory HMA samples and finds that the linear regression fits the laboratory data well. Lastly, this report shares experiences and lessons learned from a field implementation of DPS for a paving project in Greenbelt, MD.
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