Materials Engineering Faculty Candidate Seminar
"Durable and Sustainable Infrastructure through Multiscale and Interdisciplinary Modeling of Asphalt Pavement Materials" Michael Elwardany, Ph.D., P.E., Manager at the Asphalt Binder and Mixture Laboratories at the FHWA - Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center
Wednesday | March 9th| 2:00PM-3:00PM
NH 181A or Zoom Link: https://unl.zoom.us/j/93249011635
Abstract: The world’s economic growth and environmental sustainability depend on the durability and resiliency of the transportation infrastructure. Asphalt pavements represent about 83% of paved roads and 90% of all runways and parking areas. The formulation and manufacture of paving grade asphalt binders have changed considerably due to various economic, technical, and environmental reasons. Many of these changes led to underperforming binders that are susceptible to long-term aging and cracking, whereas they continue to meet the requirements of current Superpave specifications. State highway agencies are increasingly experiencing premature failures of newly constructed pavements despite general compliance with existing material specifications, mix and pavement design standards, and construction methods. There are many aspects to this topic, and in this seminar, a brief overview will be provided regarding major gaps identified in the current practice and recent research outcomes to overcome them. This presentation will focus in greater detail on long-term oxidative aging, which leads to stiff and brittle asphalt mixtures that are prone to cracking. Moreover, current mix and pavement design methods do not account for the impact of long-term aging on material characteristics and pavement performance. A newly developed laboratory simulation procedure and a predictive model of field aging will be presented. Additionally, this presentation will demonstrate how these models are being integrated with viscoelastic continuum damage material modeling into next-generation pavement structural analysis models that consider material properties as a function of pavement service life. These research outcomes provide bases to improve binder formulation, mixture design, and pavement analysis to save taxpayers’ money and achieve more durable and sustainable transportation infrastructure.
Bio: Dr. Michael Elwardany is the manager of the Asphalt Binder and Mixture Laboratories at the FHWA - Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center. He earned his Ph.D. from NCSU with a focus on the multiscale characterization, laboratory simulation, and modeling of long-term aging in asphalt pavements. He was the program manager for paving asphalts at the Western Research Institute for three years. Dr. Elwardany served as the principal investigator or project manager to a National Cooperative Highway Research Program Project, a USDOT Small Business Innovation Research Project, and the Asphalt Industry Research Consortium. He is the original developer of the Aging Duration Maps, the internal restraint damage mechanism model, and some binder rheological and failure parameters. His work was published in 24 journal papers (3 under review), 25 conference papers, and 7 final project reports. Dr. Elwardany is a candidate for a faculty position at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
More details at: https://unl.zoom.us/j/93249011635