The influence of vehicle speed changes at mechanistic performance of asphalt mixture

Asphalt mixture is a viscoelastic material. Several factors affect the behavior of a viscoelastic material. Temperature and loading time are the most critical of these parameters. Vehicle speed affects time loading, therefore it’s very important to know the influence of vehicle speed changes in mechanistic performance of bitumen and asphalt mixture with different aggregate gradation types, namely dense graded and gap graded. Based on data of bitumen penetration, bitumen softening point, volume of bitumen, volume of aggregate and volume of voids, mechanistic performance of bitumen and asphalt mixture influenced by vehicle speed changes can be predicted using the software BANDS 2.0. The variation of vehicle speed will be carried out to see its significance. The results of the BANDS 2.0 simulation show that vehicle speed changes influence bitumen stiffness, asphalt mix stiffness and fatigue life asphalt mix. The higher the vehicle speed is, the higher bitumen stiffness and asphalt mix stiffness will be, but fatigue life asphalt mix will be lower. At the same vehicle speed, asphalt mix stiffness of dense graded mixture will be higher than gap graded mixture. The other way for fatigue life asphalt mix.