Abstract:
In the coming years, it is anticipated that the current Canadian climate will no longer be the norm, and temperatures will be increasingly different as a result of anthropogenic climate change. Increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are at the root of changing climate, which is only expected to worsen over time. Pavement performance models show that changing climate will result in accelerated pavement deterioration. To mitigate pavement deterioration, various adaptation strategies have been suggested in the recent literature. One of these adaptation strategies is upgrading the superpave asphalt binder grade. It is well known that asphalt binder is highly sensitive to climate factors such as temperature and percent sunshine. Hence, reviewing asphalt binder grade is a vital step, and that can help decelerate pavement deterioration. This study aims to understand the impact of climate change on existing flexible pavements and identify the appropriate binder grades necessary to accommodate these effects across Canada. To achieve this goal, the analysis was carried out in six phases. In the first phase, statistically downscaled climate change models were gathered from the Pacific Climate database. Then in the second phase, daily maximum and minimum temperatures and daily average precipitation data were extracted using a python code. In the third phase, the pavement materials, traffic, and structural data are collected from Long-term pavement performance (LTPP) database. In addition, hourly temperature and precipitation data were estimated using existing hourly data and state of the art estimation model for each day throughout the design period. Then in the fourth phase, the pavement performance was assessed using AASHTOware Mechanistic-Empirical (ME) Pavement Design. In the fifth phase, using the temperature data gathered from pacific climate, asphalt binder grades were determined for the future climate. Then in the final phase, the pavement performance is again determined with the proposed future asphalt binder grades. Comparing the pavement performance between base binder grade and the proposed future binder grade confirms the necessity of considering proposed asphalt binder grades for future climate.
Contributors: Swarna S T, Hossain K, Bernier A.