Impact of vibration compaction on the paving density and transverse uniformity of hot paving layer

Abstract

The compaction performance of asphalt pavement depends upon not only the material design but also the construction procedure. This paper intends to quantitatively evaluate the impacts of material properties and paving parameters on the paving compaction quality (i.e., the density and uniformity). A vibration model of screed-paving layer interactions was built to simulate the screed vibration response and the vibration transmission to the paving layer with the vibration frequency and material stiffness. Then, the force transmitting ratio (FTR), contact force, moment transmitting ratio (MTR) and transmitting rotation moment were used to evaluate the compaction of the paving layer. Moreover, a quantized density model was proposed to quantitatively predict the paving compaction performance. In contrast to traditional analyses, the transverse amplitude uniformity of the screed was considered in this work. Finally, the simulation model was validated through a field test. The results show that the paving layer stiffness is positively associated with the initial layer density, which depends on the tamper frequency. For the case study in this paper, the optimum frequency is approximately 163 rad/s, 175 rad/s and 190 rad/s when the tamper frequency is 19 rad/s, 57 rad/s and 95 rad/s, respectively. Larger variation coefficient (CV) and density ratio (DR) indicate that the uniformity of the paving layer density distribution and the pavement roughness are worse. Therefore, it is recommended that the screed vibration frequency and mixture stiffness, which both affect the paving layer density and compaction uniformity, should be considered for future construction procedures.

Keywords:

• Vibration compaction
• quantised density
• transverse uniformity
• pavement construction
• optimum frequency

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the support from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (310825175008, 300102258401) and the Research Projects of Inner Mongolia Communications science and technology project (NJ-2016-20).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant numbers 310825175008, 300102258401]; and the Research Projects of Inner Mongolia Communications science and technology project [grant number NJ-2016-20].