Analysis of Viscoelastic Mechanical Response of Asphalt Mixture Pavement on Steel Deck under Imperfect Contact Conditions

Abstract

For long-span steel bridges, the contact states between the pavement and the steel decks change significantly during the operation stage. Different interlayer contact states have different effects on the viscoelastic mechanical properties of the pavement. Here, the modified SMA10 mixture and the epoxy–asphalt mixture are compared in terms of the transverse tensile strain, the transverse tensile stress, and the deflection at the bottom of the asphalt layer under different contact conditions. The main curve clusters of the relaxation modulus were obtained using the creep test data, and the effects of four different contact conditions on the viscoelastic mechanical response of the asphalt mixture pavement of the Huangpu Suspension Bridge in China were analyzed accordingly. It was found that the delayed deformation capacity of the epoxy–asphalt mixture is better than that of the modified SMA10 mixture. The change of the interlayer contact condition has an impact on the viscoelastic mechanical response of the asphalt mixture pavement; for the modified SMA10 asphalt mixture pavement, the transverse tensile stress and the transverse tensile strain at the bottom of the pavement are more sensitive to the contact condition than the deflection. For the epoxy–asphalt mixture pavement, the deflection is more sensitive to the contact condition.