ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Construction Materials
Volume 11 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2025.1675597
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancements and Applications of Balanced Mix Design (BMD) In Asphalt Pavement Engineering: Towards Sustainable And Resilient InfrastructureView all 8 articles
The balanced mix design and mechanical analysis of AC-5 mixture
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shaanxi College of Communications Technology, Xian, China
- 2Chang'an University, Xi'an, China
- 3Xi'an University of Finance and Economics, Xi'an, China
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To avoid the deviation of volumetric parameters and improve the correlation with field performance, balanced mix design of AC-5 was made in this paper. The three initial asphalt contents were determined based on the engineering experience. The OT test was applied for all asphalt contents. The load loss rate、crack resistance index and critical fracture energy were selected to determine the asphalt content range, combined with TOPSIS method. The freeze-thaw splitting test was verified. For further mechanical research, the DMA dynamic modulus test and fatigue test were carried out. Finally, the hysteresis curve of single cycle was analyzed. Based on the results, followed conclusions are obtained. Through the balanced mix design and TOPSIS analysis, the optimal asphalt content range is 8.8%-9.1%. Asphalt mixture at 9.0% possessed the lowest load loss rate and crack resistance index. While critical fracture energy decreased with reducing the asphalt content. The split tensile strength without freeze-thaw decreased and freeze-thaw split tensile strength increased with increasing asphalt content. AC-5(9.0%) mixture possessed the highest dynamic modulus and lowest microstrain, illustrating that the mixture had the best strength and anti-reflection cracking performance. Besides, the power exponential function could be applied to predict fatigue life. Finally,the asphalt mixture at 9.0% had sufficient asphalt content, meaning that the mixture had the best bonding strength between aggregates. Higher asphalt content prevented the water erosion and improved the bonding area between the asphalt and aggregate. The hysteresis curve was significantly different conditions. And the indexes(stored energy W、dissipative energy ∆W and internal friction Q!") were applied to evaluate the AC-5 performance through the Pearson correlation analysis. The indexes had obvious regularity with stress and temperature.
Keywords: Balanced mix design, AC-5 mixture, Overlay test, Mechanical analysis, Hysteretic curve
Received: 29 Jul 2025; Accepted: 22 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Hao, Peng, Huang, Yang, Yao and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Peiwen Hao, 40304626@qq.com
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