Minnesota Department of Transportation Case Studies for Coreless Asphalt Pavement Compaction Assessment

Available methods for assessing hot-mix-asphalt pavements are typically restricted to destructive methods such as coring that damage the pavement and are limited in coverage. Recently, density profiling systems (DPS) have become available with the capability of measuring asphalt compaction continuously, giving instantaneous measurements a few hundred feet behind the final roller of the freshly placed pavement. Further developments of the methods involved with DPS processing have allowed for coreless calibration by correlating dielectric measurements with asphalt specimens fabricated at variable air void contents using superpave gyratory compaction. These developments make DPS technology an attractive potential tool for quality control because of the real-time nature of the results, and quality assurance because of the ability to measure a more statistically significant amount of data as compared with current quality assurance methods such as coring. To test the viability of these recently developed methods for implementation, multiple projects were selected for field trials. Each field trial was used to assess the coreless calibration prediction by comparing with field cores where dielectric measurements were made. Ground truth core validation on each project showed the reasonableness of the coreless calibration method. The validated dielectric to air void prediction curves allowed for assessment of the tested pavements in relation to as-built characteristics, with the DPS providing the equivalent of approximately 100,000 cores per mile. Statistical measures were used to demonstrate how DPS can provide a comprehensive asphalt compaction evaluation that can be used to inform construction-related decisions and has potential as a future quality assurance tool.