Laboratory short-term aging protocol for plant-mixed and laboratory compacted samples

• Laboratory aging protocol for plant-mixed and laboratory compacted samples.
• Impacts of laboratory oven aging conditions on engineering properties of asphalt mixes.
• Practical laboratory aging time and container size for sampling plant mixes.

It is well known that oven aging conditions (temperature and time) have significant influence on both engineering properties and field performance of asphalt mixes, and they also affect volumetric properties. Correspondingly, the oven aging temperature and time are critical to asphalt mix design, quality control, and engineering properties used for pavement design and performance prediction. This paper presents a tremendous laboratory effort to make recommendations on laboratory short-term aging protocol for plant-mixed and laboratory compacted (PMLC) specimens. To this end, various laboratory tests, including Hamburg wheel tracking test, Overlay test, indirect tensile strength test, resilient modulus test, and dynamic modulus test were performed to compare the engineering properties of PMLC specimens to those of plant-mixed and field compacted (PMFC) field core specimens at different aging stages. The test results and recommended oven aging time were presented and discussed in this paper.