Research Projects

Asphalt roads are one of the most valuable assets of the country. Currently, asphalt mixtures that are used in the construction of asphalt pavements are evaluated and optimized in the laboratory using compacted samples. Marshall and Superpave gyratory compactors are most used to compact loose asphalt mixtures in the laboratory to mimic the compaction of asphalt mixtures in the field. With the advancement in the computational power, creating virtual tools to evaluate asphalt mixtures can improve the optimization of the mixture design by evaluating the different mixture variables comprehensively. In the past, virtual tools such as finite element method has been developed and are very well established in the research community to evaluate the compacted asphalt mixtures. However, proper virtual tools are not available to obtain the compacted asphalt mixture specimen and is mostly obtained by scanning a physical sample obtained from the laboratory compaction. This research study aims to address this gap by creating a digital twin of Marshall and Superpave gyratory compactors that would simulate the compaction of asphalt mixtures in the laboratory. The virtually compacted asphalt mixture specimen obtained from this research could be used as an input to the already well-established virtual tools for the evaluation of asphalt mixtures. The digital twin of the asphalt compactors obtained from this project will help reduce the laboratory testing work and has the ability to perform more comprehensive analyses of asphalt mixture which is otherwise not feasible in the laboratory setting only.