ADVANCED PAVEMENT LABORATORY

The Advanced Pavement Laboratory (APL) at ASU has gone through a major expansion since July 1999. The laboratory now is the state-of-the-art facility that provides full capability for characterizing asphalt concrete mixtures, unbound materials, and complete asphalt binder characterization. The APL occupies more than 3000 square feet in the Engineering Complex B-Wing. The entire testing laboratory comprises of four main sections depending upon the specific functionality.

Teaching Classroom: This section of the laboratory is dedicated to provide teaching of civil engineering materials design, testing and evaluation for undergraduate and graduate course requirements. This lab is fully equipped with ovens, scales, mixers, Marshall mix design molds, water baths and compactors. A compression machine for concrete cylinders, and a vibratory compacter for unbound materials.

An adjacent area to the laboratory is dedicated for aggregate storage and handling. This includes sieving and batching of aggregates for preparing asphalt mixtures. The area is also equipped with state of the art automated coring machine, and two saws for preparing various sizes and geometry of test specimens.

Mixing Laboratory: Asphalt sample preparation is carried out using a SHRP approved procedure using a Superpave Gyratory compactor. The laboratory has two Troxler and one IPC Servopac compactors. Four large ovens for controlling the mixing, aging, and compaction temperatures are available within this laboratory, as well as specific gravity apparatus for density measurements of fabricated specimens. A Corelok equipment as well as a Troxler ignition oven is also available in this section of the laboratory.

Advance Material Testing: This is the main research laboratory for advanced material characterization testing of asphalt mixtures and unbound materials. Several state of the art servo-hydraulic closed loop systems are housed in this section of the laboratory. These include two 25 kN and one 100 kN Universal Testing machine (Industrial Process Control – IPC) for uniaxial and triaxial testing of paving materials. All these three systems have environmental chambers for temperature conditioning. In addition, an INSTRON system dedicated for Indirect Tensile testing and an SBEL system that has triaxial capabilities for unbound material are also available within this section.

Two beam fatigue apparatus for fatigue life evaluation of asphalt mixtures are also available. Each beam fatigue apparatus is a stand-alone system with environmental chamber and data acquisition software that performs the SHRP designated M009 test protocols. The test can be run either in strain or stress controlled loadings.

All machines have digital servo-controlled actuators with integrated control and data acquisition systems to provide accurate force or displacement waveform generation. All of the machines are equipped with customized data acquisition software that provides a user-friendly interface with the system to carry out a wide range of tests and analysis procedures.

Binder Laboratory: This section of the laboratory has state-of-the-art equipment for asphalt binder testing and characterization. The main equipment includes Superpave Rotational Viscometer, Bending Beam Rheometer (BBR), Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR), Rolling Thin Film Oven (RTFO), and Pressure Aging Vessel (PAV).