Northern Asphalt Pavement Low Temperature Crack Resistance

Thermal cracking of asphalt pavements in cold climates is a widespread problem around the world and has been observed in most of northern China. The thermal cracking is manifested as transverse cracks extending across the pavement surface, appearing after a cold weather event with approximately regular interval between cracks. The emergence of the cracks will make water infiltrate the pavement structure and result in decrease in pavement structural capacity and pavement service life.This paper analyzed the mechanism of the low-temperature cracking in asphalt concrete pavement and the factors influenced cracking. Through comparing and analyzing, this paper chooses suitable test methods and indexes of evaluating the performance of anti-cracking.Test result indicate that both SBS modified asphalt and soft asphslt have good low-temperature anti-cracking performance and paving stress absorbing interlayer between asphalt pavement layers can effectively reduce the low-temperature cracks.