4.2.1. Evaluation of Temperatures during Hauling and Paving
The trials in the plants A, B, C and D were carried out between October 2018 and April 2019. In the chosen days, the average air temperature measured during the experimentation was about 15 °C and the weather was sunny.
Table 4 shows, for each system, the hours when the loose mixtures were produced and sampled from the truck bed, and the average temperatures measured on the top corner (C), inside the truck bed (B) and on the loose mixture sampled from the truck body at 50 cm depth (L). The average temperatures measured during the paving phases are shown in
Table 5. Moreover, the time elapsed between the production of the mixtures and their lay-down is reported. In the table, the codes “N” and “I”, respectively, indicate the normal and the insulated trucks.
The data in
Table 4 show that the cooling of the mix inside the truck bed (B) was very low (10 °C after about 3 h). Moreover, there was no significant difference between the normal and the insulated trucks. Probably, the tarpaulin which protected the top of the normal truck bed allowed the cooling on the material surface to be avoided, similar to the case of the insulated truck. Conversely, the temperatures on the top corner (C) and those measured on the loose mix (L) considerably decreased (up to 66 °C and 60 °C, respectively). For plant A, the insulated truck was proved to reduce the heat loss, particularly in the truck corner. However, for plant B, the lower precision in the measurement did not allow confirmation of this assumption.
From
Table 5 it can be noted that the mix produced at plant B showed a comparable temperature in the paver if hauled with a normal or insulated truck. Some temperature differences between the different truck types were observed after the laying. As both the probe and infrared thermometers measured the temperature in localized positions of the road surface, this result was probably related to thermal segregation of the material during hauling. It was difficult to evaluate the influence of the truck type from the temperature determined on the pavement surface. However, the noticeably different temperature outside the truck bed was a sign of the insulated truck’s ability to preserve the HMA heat during the 3 h from production to paving.
4.2.2. Thermal Image Analysis
The pictures taken with the infrared camera were of considerable interest.
Figure 6 and
Figure 7 show the most significant images for the evaluation of HMA cooling and temperature segregation during hauling phase.
The strong external cooling compared to the almost zero cooling of the HMA batch determined a huge temperature segregation at the paving site, as evidenced by the measurements with the probe and infrared thermometers and by the photos with the thermal imaging camera. In particular,
Figure 6a highlights that 3 h after mix production, near the corner of the normal truck, the loose HMA cooled rather quickly, showing a large temperature difference (approximately 30 °C) between the material in contact with the edge and that in the center of the truck bed. Conversely, in the case of insulated truck (
Figure 6b), this temperature segregation was less severe (temperature variation of about 10 °C).
Figure 7 shows that, during the paving, there was a huge difference in the HMA temperature on the pavement surface (higher than 30 °C). This was probably due to the inability of the paving machine to re-mix the loose HMA and disperse the colder parts among the warmer mass. The temperature segregation can negatively affect the HMA compaction, especially in the construction of thin layers (i.e., surface layers) where the colder portions can hardly be heated by the surrounding material, even if much warmer. If the temperature of the colder parts drops below the minimum temperature necessary for a good compaction (typically about 130–140 °C for HMA with polymer modified bitumen), high porosity areas which are more susceptible to rapid degradation (cracking and raveling in particular), can occur.
4.2.3. Laboratory Tests
Figure 8,
Figure 9,
Figure 10 and
Figure 11 show the average values of
Vm,
ITSM,
ITS and
CTindex measured for the specimens compacted in the plant (immediately after the sampling of the loose asphalt), in the laboratory (after re-heating) and for the cores.
The bar-chart in
Figure 8 shows that there was no significant difference in the voids contents of the specimens from the HMA produced in plant A, B and C. In particular, the air voids content of these samples, compacted with SGC in the plant, was about 2–3%, independently from sampling time and truck type. Conversely, the specimens from the HMA produced in plant D showed a higher
Vm, approximately 4–5%, but also in this case the influence of sampling time was not very high. This result indicates that the eventual increase in binder viscosity achieved in the truck, due to bitumen ageing or cooling, did not affect the mix compactability, as observed for the HMA produced in the laboratory (
Figure 3). The specimens compacted after re-heating showed a higher air voids content (4.2% on average), indicating a certain decrease in mix workability.
The Vm values of the cores showed different trends for the plants A–D: for plants A and B the air voids content of the cores was higher than that of the specimens, for plant C it was comparable, while for plant D it was lower. Moreover, for the HMA produced in plant A there was a significant difference in Vm as a function of the truck type (8% for a normal truck, 5.5% for an insulated truck), while for the mix produced in plant B, the truck type had no influence on Vm (about 4.5%). As the voids content of each core represents the condition of the pavement in the exact place where the cores were taken, the absence of a clear trend and the higher data dispersion probably reflected the temperature segregation and localized cooling observed with the thermal camera.
Figure 9 shows that, for all the plants, the
ITSM values of the specimens compacted on site were always about 4000 MPa, independently from the truck type and time spent in the truck during the hauling phase (the only exception is represented by the specimens from plant C, whose
ITSM slightly increased as a function of the sampling time). It is very interesting to note that this result was opposite to what was observed in the mix produced in the laboratory (
Figure 4), where ITSM increased as a function of the conditioning time in the oven at 180 °C.
Figure 12 allows a better comparison between the mixes conditioned in the laboratory oven and the mixes kept in the truck bed. The graph shows the normalized
ITSM as a function of the time between HMA mixing and compaction, where the normalized
ITSM was calculated as the ratio of the
ITSM measured at the different conditioning time with the
ITSM measured at the lowest conditioning time for each mixture. It can be observed that the red lines, which represent the mixes produced at the plant and kept in the truck bed, always have a lower slope than the blue lines, which represent the mixes produced in the laboratory and conditioned in the oven. This clearly indicates a less marked effect of the ageing for the HMA kept in the truck bed. The reason for this is probably in the fact that, in the laboratory, the small amount of HMA in the oven (some kilograms) allowed oxygen to come into contact with most of the loose mix, favoring binder oxidation and loss of volatiles. On site, the HMA was taken out from the truck bed at 50 cm depth from the batch surface, where the temperature remained almost constant and the material was repaired by the one above. In such conditions, the batch surface was exposed to external conditions, but the core was basically isolated and neither oxidation nor loss of volatility could occur, hindering the ageing of the HMA.
Additionally,
ITS (
Figure 10) and
CTIndex (
Figure 11) were approximately constant with sampling time, even if a slight variability between the mixes produced in the different plants was observed. In order to assess whether the groups of data were statistically comparable or different, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out.
Table 6 shows the significance values obtained in the comparison between the different data (
Vm,
ITSM,
ITS or
CTIndex) for each examined variable (type of truck, sampling time and HMA manufacturing plant): for values lower than 5% (in bold characters) the null hypothesis is rejected, meaning that the groups of data are statistically different. The significance values obtained through the ANOVA test showed that all the measured properties (
Vm,
ITSM,
ITS or
CTIndex) were not dependent from the truck type, i.e., the voids, stiffness, strength and cracking tolerance were comparable for the specimens from the normal and insulated truck bed. The properties
Vm,
ITSM and
ITS were also independent from the sampling time (significance values higher than 0.05), indicating that there was not any correlation between the different quantities and the time between HMA mixing and compaction. This is also valid for
CTIndex, even if the significance value was lower than 0.05, because the statistically different data groups did not set a monotonic (increasing or decreasing) trend. Finally, the very low significance values obtained for the data from the different plants indicate that the volumetric and mechanical properties of the HMA specimens varied according to the plant where they had been mixed.
From
Figure 8,
Figure 9,
Figure 10 and
Figure 11 it can be noted that the cores had lower
ITSM and
ITS and higher
CTindex with respect to the specimens from the same plant, compacted on site, probably related to different air voids content. Instead, for the HMA compacted in the laboratory after re-heating at 170 °C, the stiffness modulus considerably increased (growth greater than 100%). At the same time,
ITS noticeably increased (up to 2.1 MPa) and
CTIndex fell (lower than 30). This result confirms that a severe ageing happened during the HMA re-heating in the oven.