A micromechanical model of elastic-damage properties of innovative pothole patching materials featuring high-toughness, low-viscosity nanomolecular resin

Abstract

Innovative pothole patching materials reinforced with a high-toughness, low-viscosity nanomolecular resin, dicyclopentadiene (DCPD, C10H12), have been experimentally proven to be effective in repairing cracked asphalt pavements and can significantly enhance their durability and service life. In this paper, a three-dimensional micromechanical framework is proposed based on the micromechanics and continuum damage mechanics to predict the effective elastic-damage behaviors of this innovative pothole patching material under the splitting tension test (ASTM D6931). In this micromechanical model, irregular coarse aggregates are approximated and simulated by randomly allocated multi-layer-coated spherical particles in certain representative sizes. Fine aggregates, asphalt binder (PG64-10), cured DCPD (p-DCPD), and air voids are formulated into an isotropic elastic asphalt mastic matrix based on the multilevel homogenization approach. The theoretical micromechanical elastic-damage predictions are then systemically compared with properly designed laboratory experiments as well as three-dimensional finite elements numerical simulations for the innovative pothole patching materials.

An isotropic elasto-damage-plastic micromechanical framework of innovative pothole patching materials featuring high-toughness, low-viscosity nanomolecular resin

“…An initial elastic strain energy based damage evolution criterion is proposed to predict the elastic damage behavior of the innovative material. The numerical simulations consistent with the proposed framework by Zhang et al (2021) exhibited relatively good agreement with experimental results; however, plastic behaviors were not considered in the original framework.…”

“…In order to use the pairwise interacting solution, a multilevel homogenization procedure is established, illustrated in Figure 4. A comparison of the effective elastic moduli of an interim asphalt mastic (neglecting air voids) and final state asphalt mastic (considering air voids) calculated by equations ( 12) and ( 13) based on the aforementioned multilevel homogenization procedure and those by Hashin-Shtrikman bounds have proved the multilevel homogenization to be reasonable (see Table 6 of Zhang et al, 2021).…”

“…The effective Young's modulus E 0 and Poisson's ratio t 0 of an equivalent multilayer-coated particle of a certain size are given as equations ( 1) and (2) whereas the detailed derivation can be found in the corresponding recent paper by Zhang et al (2021).…”

“…Enlightened by previous works by Mazars et al (Ju, 1989b;Lubliner et al, 1989;Mazars, 1986;Polanco-Loria and Sørensen, 1995;Simo and Ju, 1987a), an initial elastic strain energy based isotropic damage evolution function is proposed (Zhang et al, 2021)…”

“…Subsequently, Yuan et al (2014) proposed a two-dimensional elastic model of the innovative patching materials to numerically predict the damage behavior under the splitting tension test. To remedy the limitation of Yuan's two-dimensional work in part, an improved rigorous three-dimensional micromechanical framework was established (Zhang et al, 2021). The three-dimensional framework made improvements in predicting the mechanical behaviors by generalizing analytical solutions of elastic moduli of the coarse aggregates and introducing a multilevel homogenization procedure to the asphalt mastic.…”