Physical and mechanical moisture susceptibility of asphaltic mixtures

Moisture has for a long time been recognized as a serious contributor to premature degradation of asphaltic pavements. Many studies have been performed to collect, describe and measure the moisture susceptibility of asphaltic mixes. Most of these aimed at a comparative measure of moisture damage, either via visual observations from field data or comparative laboratory tests. The research presented in this paper is part of an ongoing research effort to move away from such comparative or empirical measures of moisture induced damage of asphaltic materials and develop a fundamental approach via a comprehensive energy based computational framework. Such a framework would enable realistic predictions and time assessment of the failure pattern occurring in an asphaltic pavement under the given environmental and traffic loading, which could be rutting, cracking, raveling or any combination or manifestation thereof. The paper discusses the fundamental moisture induced damage parameters and demonstrates the developed model.