Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2020

Department

Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Abstract

The clump-based discrete element model is one of the asphalt mixture simulation methods, which has the potential to not only predict mixture performance but also simulate particle movement during compaction, transporting, and other situations. However, modelling of asphalt sand mortar in this method remains to be a problem due to computing capacity. Larger-sized balls (generally 2.0-2.36 mm) were usually used to model the smaller particles and asphalt binder, but this replacement may result in the mixture's unrealistic volumetric features. More specifically, replacing original elements with equal volume but larger size particles will increase in buck volume and then different particle contacting states. The major objective of this research is to provide a solution to the dilemma situation through an improved equivalent model of the smaller particles and asphalt binders. The key parameter of the equivalent model is the diameter reduction factor (DRF), which was proposed in this research to minimize the effects of asphalt mortar's particle replacement modelling. To determine DRF, the DEM-based analysis was conducted to evaluate several mixture features, including element overlap ratio, ball-wall contact number, and the average wall stress. Through this study, it was observed that when the original glued ball diameters are ranging from 2.00 mm and 2.36 mm, the diameter reduction factor changes from 0.82 to 0.86 for AC mixtures and 0.80 to 0.84 for SMA mixtures. The modelling method presented in this research is suitable not only for asphalt mixtures but also for the other particulate mix with multisize particles.

Publisher's Statement

Copyright © 2020 Yu Liu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/8855409

Publication Title

Advances in Civil Engineering

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Version

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