Asphalt Pavement Performance in Extreme Weather Events in Tropical Country

Abstract

In the tropical climatic countries like Vietnam, Thailand…, for the last few years, the air temperature often raises up to 42.7°C and thus it heated up the asphalt pavements to 75°C. Additionally, more torrential prolonged raining often occurs at high temperature. In such the extreme weather, a large increase in asphalt pavement distresses such as rutting, shoving, slippage and potholes happened often with both of the new and normally used highway pavements. These asphalt pavement distresses are costly and decreasing serviceability of highways. The study was conducted to interpret the behavior of asphalt highway pavements under the extreme weather conditions with consideration of different aggregate types, HMA gradation, varying temperature and immersion time. Two series of the Indirect Tensile Tests (ID) and the series of Unconfined Compression Tests (UC) were analyzed to check the behavior of asphalt pavements due to the temperature, water, and aggregate type superposition. The study carried out two series of ID tests and UC tests under wide ranges of temperatures varied from 25°C, 45°C, 60°C and 75°C and under ranges of immersion time varied from 40 minutes, 24 hours, 72 hours and 120 hours at 60°C. Based on the on-site observations and the experimental data, asphalt pavement deterioration was evaluated, and paper recommends the remedies to reduce the distress of the asphalt pavement.