Temperature Distribution in Asphalt Pavement: Experiment and Numerical Method

This paper presents the results of the study on predicting the temperature distribution in the asphalt concrete (AC) surface layer of the semi-rigid pavement structure. Temperature distribution is studied on on-site actual monitoring and numerical simulation by ANSYS software based on one-dimensional heat transfer theory. The semi-rigid pavement structure consists of a 13cm thick AC 12,5mm surface and a 15cm thick cement-treated base 31,5mm. Simulation analysis is performed in 3 cases of different thermophysical properties (thermal conductivity, specific heat capacity, density) of the AC layer. The analysis results show that, the temperature variation with depth in the AC layer depends on its thermophysical properties. Using thermophysical properties according to the actual working temperature of AC (case 1) gives prediction results that are more approximate to the actual monitoring temperature than using a constant value (cases 2 and case 3)