Evaluating Moisture Damage Using Impact Resonance Test

Moisture damage in asphalt mixtures has been a major cause for premature failure of asphalt pavements for decades. Although a lot of research has been done and many test methods have been developed to evaluate moisture damage in asphalt mixtures, not much research has been done on the use of nondestructive testing techniques to evaluate moisture damage in asphalt mixtures. The impact resonance (IR) test is a nondestructive test that is used to determine material properties like dynamic elastic modulus. The IR test on asphalt mixtures is done on a thin-disk specimen (150-mm diameter and 25-mm thickness). In this study, the IR test was used to assess moisture damage in asphalt mixtures by determining the resonant frequency of asphalt mixture samples in the unconditioned and moisture conditioned state. The relative reduction (ER) in dynamic elastic modulus was calculated as the ratio of the resonant frequency of conditioned and unconditioned specimens from the IR test, which was used to evaluate moisture damage. Moisture sensitivity of the asphalt mixtures was also determined by the tensile strength ratio (TSR) test. Two different moisture conditioning procedures were used for both the IR test and TSR test—modified AASHTO T 283 (Standard Method of Test for Resistance of Compacted Asphalt Mixtures to Moisture-Induced Damage) and Moisture Induced Stress Tester (MIST) conditioning. Six different mixtures from three different aggregate sources were used in this study. A good correlation was observed between TSR values from the TSR test using both conditioning procedures and the ER values from the IR test using both conditioning procedures for the asphalt mixtures used in this study. This study shows that the IR test can be used to evaluate moisture damage in asphalt mixtures. This study also explored the effects of various parameters such as support condition, impact source, and impact location on the resonant frequency from the IR test.