Abstract Manager

The safety of a road network highly influences its overall productivity and efficiency. High-performance asphalt concrete (HPAC) is an innovative paving mixture in the design and construction of high-traffic roads in North America, which has high strength, good fatigue life, and excellent rutting resistance. However, the HPAC application is limited in colder regions because of the material's low flexibility and stress relaxation capacity. A road pavement undergoes different types of defects and failures throughout its design life, among which cracking is one of the prominent types. Cracking in the asphalt pavement is introduced by numerous causes, such as heavy traffic, low temperature, and poor drainage. Cracking in the asphalt pavement negatively affects a road's lifespan and increases the maintenance cost of a road. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to evaluate the impact of asphalt mix modification in terms of resistance to cracking and improvement of cracking tolerance in high-performance asphalt concrete with the utilization of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) fibres in the mixes. Three different lengths of PET fibres (6 mm, 12 mm, and 18 mm) are used in the mixes. A binder source with PG 70-22 is used for fabricating the HPAC throughout this research, which is modified with 12% asphaltenes (by the weight of binder). A cracking test (IDEAL-CT) for all the asphalt mixes was conducted to determine the cracking tolerance (CT) index values. The analysis of the test results shows a comparison between the calculated CT indices of the control (unmodified) mix, asphaltenes modified mix and modified mixes using different PET fibre lengths.