Abstract
As asphalt pavements age and deteriorate, recurring pothole repair failures and propagating alligator cracks in the asphalt pavements have become a serious issue to our daily life and resulted in high repairing costs for pavement and
vehicles. To solve this urgent issue, pothole repair materials with superior durability and long service life are needed. In the present work, revolutionary pothole patching materials with high toughness, high fatigue resistance that are
reinforced with nano-molecular resins have been developed to enhance their resistance to traffic loads and service life of repaired potholes. In particular, DCPD resin (dicyclopentadiene, C10H12) with a Rhuthinium-based catalyst is employed to develop controlled properties that are compatible with aggregates and asphalt binders. In this paper, a multi-level numerical micromechanics-based model is developed to predict the viscoelastic properties and dynamic moduli of these innovative nano-molecular resin reinforced pothole patching materials. Irregular coarse aggregates in the finite element analysis are modeled as randomly-dispersed multi-layers coated particles. The effective properties of asphalt mastic, which consists of fine aggregates, tar, cured DCPD and air voids are theoretically estimated by the homogenization technique of micromechanics in conjunction with the elastic-viscoelastic correspondence principle. Numerical predictions of homogenized viscoelastic properties and dynamic moduli are demonstrated.
