Abstract
Road administrators encounter situations where they must make decisions regarding the maintenance and rehabilitation of a road network without knowing the outcome of those decisions until years later. The Heavy Vehicle Simulator has been widely used as an accelerated testing tool to study pavement performance in a shorter period and under more controlled conditions than in the field. The Virginia Department of Transportation, in conjunction with the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and the Virginia Transportation Research Council, has initiated a research project to study the behavior and performance of different pavement materials and structures under accelerated load through a Heavy Vehicle Simulator. Six pavement sections with different structures were built and instrumented with strain gauges, load cells, temperature gauges, and linear vertical displacement transducers. Two lanes were dedicated to study reflection cracking. They included a concrete pavement with joints 9.5 mm (3/8 inch) wide to reflect cracks in the surface. These lanes were covered with two 1.5-inch (38.1-mm) layers of a control SMA mix asphalt and a similar mix
modified with a synthetic fiber. This article presents the results of this reflection cracking study. The article describes the characterization of the asphalt mixtures used, the pavement structure, the construction design, the Heavy Vehicle Simulator used and the installed instrumentation. The paper also presents some of the lessons learned, experimental changes, and study results in terms of cracking and rutting performance.