A STUDY OF HMA RUTTING PERFORMANCE USING ACCELERATED PAVEMENT TESTING

Among the great concerns of roadway technicians is discovering a way of managing roadway systems in a safe and acceptable manner, rationing the scarce resources available from public agencies. The challenge then, is to manage the lack of resources, combined with the increasingly growing flow of light and heavy traffic vehicles, associated with rheological and hydraulic variability of the mechanical properties of the available materials. Within this social context, the roadway research center of the Centro Federal de Educao Tecnolgica de So Paulo (Federal Technological Education Center of Sao Paulo) devised an accelerated pavement testing equipment designed for studying, on a real scale and reduced time basis, the main mechanical phenomena that govern a pavement structure submitted to the mechanical force of a pair of wheels. This paper gives an overview of the design and construction of the accelerated pavement testing equipment, as well as of the preliminary results relative to the study of the performance of permanent deformation of hot mix asphalt coatings used on heavily trafficked roads, in accordance with standards of the Departamento Nacional de Estradas de Rodagem.