Structural sensitivity of an asphalt pavement to asphalt binder content and mix design method

The goal of this study was to analyze the structural sensitivity of a flexible pavement, whose asphalt layers underwent variations in its mechanical properties due to the asphalt binder content and the mix design method Marshall and Superpave. A variation of ±0.5% within the optimum asphalt binder contents was used (service tolerance) considering possible permissible variations in the asphalt binder content during the asphalt mixture manufacturing process. The values of resilient modulus and indirect tensile strength (Brazilian test) of the resulting asphalt mixtures were applied to the reference pavement structure analyzed by the me-PADS software. The results show that the variations in the asphalt binder content and the asphalt mixtures design method influence the mechanical properties and corresponding structural responses of the pavement investigated: the asphalt layers designed by the Marshall method presented greater sensitivity to the variation in asphalt binder content, which may constitute a technical differential of asphalt mixtures designed by the Superpave method.