A Parametric Study to Understand the Adhesion Failure Mechanism of Asphalt Sealant

Although adhesive failure is the predominant distress responsible for early sealant failure in asphalt pavement, there is hardly any study available on variation of adhesive strength of sealant-asphalt concrete with temperature change. This study was performed to investigate the adhesive strength of sealant by utilizing a new test setup developed from modification of Texas overlay test. This test method applies direct tension to sealant-substrate assembly, uses reasonable large scale asphalt concrete substrate, performs tests on easily prepared specimens and most importantly does not require any specialized sealant testing machine. In this study, type I and type IV sealants were tested at four temperatures on two different thicknesses to evaluate the adhesive strength. A general conclusion obtained from this study is that sealant recommended for low temperature use (type IV) fails in adhesion irrespective of temperature or thickness. In addition, it follows a good correlation (R2 value of 0.93) with the elongation at failure. A correlation between shear modulus and adhesive strength for both the sealants at each thickness were also established in this paper having R2 values over 0.90 for every cases. A general trend on the effect of thickness was observed and was explained by proposing a hypothesis that there exists a certain modulus for each sealant type at which the bond strength remains same irrespective of its thickness. Also, in this study, it was clearly demonstrated that water conditioning of sealant joints reduces adhesive strength significantly by changing failure pattern from cohesive or mix mode to fully adhesive.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHD25 Standing Committee on Sealants and Fillers for Joints and Cracks.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Stagg, Daniel
  • Arafat, Shams
  • Wasiuddin, Nazimuddin M
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
• Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Adhesion; Asphalt concrete; Sealing compounds; Shear modulus; Temperature; Thickness
• Subject Areas: Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; Materials; Pavements;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01627785
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 17-06749
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 27 2017 5:12PM