A National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) project describing a new mechanical-based method for testing aged asphalt led to international recognition for two Texas A&M Transportation Institute employees: Postdoctoral Researcher Meng Ling and TTI Research Engineer Robert Lytton.
“An Inverse Approach to Determine Complex Modulus Gradient of Field-aged Asphalt Mixtures” was named a 2017 Best Paper by the peer-reviewed journal Materials and Structures, a publication of The International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures (RILEM). The journal’s board of editors chose the paper as one of ten selected for recognition.
“Because of this work, for the first time, it is now possible to predict how solar radiation bakes an asphalt mixture in the field, making it more brittle and causing it to crack more readily,” Ling notes.
“That kind of cracking is the major cause of the high deterioration rates of transportation infrastructure,” Lytton adds. “It’s a rare honor to be selected by RILEM as one of the best papers that it published in 2017.”
RILEM was founded in 1947 in Paris, France, and is made up of about 1,400 member institutions from 67 countries. The association was formed “to promote scientific cooperation and to stimulate new directions for research and applications, thus promoting excellence in construction worldwide.”