Influence of temperature on the dielectric properties of asphalt mixtures

ABSTRACT

When using non-destructive testing equipment to evaluate the quality of asphalt pavement, the asphalt pavement mixtures will exhibit different dielectric properties under dissimilar temperature conditions since the external electric field is affected by ambient temperature, which interferes with the accuracy of non-destructive testing. To improve the accuracy of non-destructive testing and quantify the influence of temperature on the dielectric properties of asphalt mixtures, a dielectric model suitable for describing the relationship between the relative dielectric constants of asphalt mixtures and temperature is established. The relative dielectric constant and dielectric loss of the two types of asphalt mixtures are measured at different temperatures to verify the accuracy of the dielectric model, and the goodness of model fit verifies wide applicability of the model. This temperature-based asphalt mixture dielectric model has great significance for quantifying the influence of temperature on the dielectric properties. Furthermore, the model shows that the dielectric properties of different asphalts and aggregates have different temperature sensitivity, and the concept of conductance activation energy proposed in this research provides innovative approaches for the optimisation of asphalt mixtures and raw materials.

KEYWORDS:

• Asphalt mixture
• temperature
• dielectric properties
• relative dielectric constant
• conductivity
• conductance activation energy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The 973 Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China: [Grant Number 2015CB060100]; The Key Research and Development Project of Hubei Province of China: [Grant Number 2020BCA085].