Microstructural Modeling Method for Asphalt Specimens Supporting 3D Adaptive and Automatic Mesh Generation

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2016

Department

Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Abstract

To further facilitate the automation and computational efficiency in asphalt mixture micromechanical simulation using finite-element methods, this paper develops a three-dimensional (3D) microstructural modeling method for asphalt mixture to automatically generate the adaptive 3D finite-element mesh. The methodology contains three main steps, as follows: (1) two-dimensional (2D) enclosed outlines in every X-ray computed tomography (CT) image of the specimens are detected with shape features of outlines and grayscale discrepancy between each two different phase pixels; (2) for each independent geometric solid such as aggregate particle and air void in a specimen, the mapping between the solid and its outlines on various layers is established, so that the 3D model of each solid is constructed; and (3) models of the same phase are assembled into a specific substructure model. The specimen microstructure model is finally obtained with appropriate Boolean operations towards specific substructure models. Experiment results indicate that the specimen microstructure model not only has an excellent accuracy in modeling and simulation, but also supports adaptive meshing toward each specific substructure model, which significantly reduces the computational cost and can be applied to asphalt mixture numerical simulation.

Publication Title

Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering

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