Effects of Needle Flake Particles on Splitting Experiment of Asphalt Mixture: An Experimental and Numerical Investigation

The purpose of this work is to study the influence of the content and shape of needle flake particles on the meso-scale splitting test performance of asphalt mixture, a three-dimensional laser scanning method is used to build the needle and flake particle model, and then the particle model is put into the numerical simulation software EDEM to establish the splitting experimental model. The influence of loading speed and model parameters on the experimental results is revealed by assigning macro and micro parameters to different particles. With calibrating the parameters by Marshall experiment, the simulation experiment results after parameter adjustment are in good agreement with the experimental results in laboratory. The results show that the splitting experimental model can be established intuitively by means of using 3D discrete element modeling technology, and the stress of each particle size in the loading process can be observed directly. The loading speed, the content of needle flake particles, the size of needle flake particles and the distance from the loading area all have a great influence on the experimental results.