Best Practices in Measuring Rutting and Shoving on Asphalt Pavements

Superpave mix design method developed by the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) was implemented to create a mix design system, performance-based asphalt binder specifications, and performance-based asphalt mix specifications. SHRP was successful with the implementation of the first and the second of the objectives. However, the third objective, i.e. performance-based asphalt mix specifications, was not implemented successfully due to some complexities. Since highway agencies have been only practicing the mix design and asphalt binder specifications to capture rutting susceptibility of asphalt pavements, there is a lack of practicing appropriate performance test to investigate rutting performance of asphalt mixtures. Due to the continuous increase in the number of heavy truck traffic, municipalities such as Regional Municipality of York in Ontario are experiencing excessive rutting in most of their intersections. Implementing an appropriate performance method and threshold on rutting that could help the agencies specifying high rut resistance mixtures during tendering process Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide the state of the art in testing asphalt mixtures suitability to rutting and shoving. This paper would further evaluate the practicality of these test methods to the asphalt mixtures primarily used in Ontario.