Influence of climate change on asphalt binder selection in China

ABSTRACT

The impact of climate change on asphalt pavement infrastructure has become increasingly apparent. This paper investigated how climate change impacts the selection of asphalt binder for freeway pavement in China. The climate data predicted by the Global Climate Model were employed to select the appropriate performance grade for asphalt binder. The predicted air temperature converted pavement temperature, and performance grade distribution of the country was analysed. It is suggested that the performance grade of asphalt binder for freeways’ pavement should be determined based on ten years’ predicted climate data. This study concluded the following four major findings. Firstly, the selection of the appropriate asphalt binder performance grade needs to take into account the effects of future climate change. Secondly, the change in the standard deviation of temperature has a greater impact on the change in asphalt performance grade, as compared to the change in average air temperature. Thirdly, climate change affects the low-temperature performance grade more than the high-temperature performance grade in China. Finally, by 2050s, 15.2% of freeway asphalt pavement needs to upgrade high-temperature performance grade limit, and 17.3% of freeway asphalt pavement needs to upgrade to low-temperature performance grade limit.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• asphalt pavement
• performance grade
• binder selection

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge NASA centre for Climate Simulation to provide access to GCM climate data. Tiancheng Liu: Conceptualisation, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing-original draft, Writing-review & editing. Shu Yang: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Resources, Supervision, Writing-review & editing. Lihua Zhu: Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing-review & editing. Bo Liao: Formal analysis, Data curation. Qian Zhang: Formal analysis, Data curation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).