Numerical Simulation of Electrophysical Properties of Asphalt Concrete Samples

Partial or major roadmending is performed on the roads annually. To assess the quality of the work performed, samples are extracted from the laid roadbed and tested in a laboratory. However, the road's integrity is not always restored. The development of a non-contact quality control methodology for paved roads without extracting samples for analysis is an extremely urgent task. The paper presents a numerical study of effective properties of the synthetic samples with internal geometry and electrophysical properties of the components close to the properties of real road pavement samples. the laboratory analysis of which allows to speak about the quality of road repair works. The authors propose a mathematical framework for determining the effective electrophysical characteristics of a heterogeneous medium. The effective characteristic is introduced as a second-rank tensor describing both the effective dielectric permittivity of a complex medium and its electrical conductivity. The simulation is performed in the MHz frequency domain. Two types of mineral filler grades of asphalt concrete mix are considered in this paper: crushed granite and crushed gabbro. The results of numerical simulations showed the dependence on the grade of crushed stone used, as well as on the volume fraction of mineral filler in the asphalt concrete mass. This indicates that it is possible to identify the granulometric content of the road surface.