_ performance Modelling of Porous Asphalt Concrete using Artificial Intelligence M. Miradi — A.A.A. Molenaar — MLF.C. van de Ven Road and Railway Engineering Department Delft University of Technology 1 Stevinweg, 2628 CN, Delft The Netherlands mmiradi@tudelfi.nl a.a.a.molenaar@tudelfi.nl . vandeven@tudelfi.nl “gasteact. In this paper bvo models are presented that allow the amount of ravelling in porous ‘asphalt concrete (PAC) wearing courses to be predicted 5 ‘and 8 years after construction. The ‘models are developed using visual condition data that were collected on a number of PAC rections for a period of 10 years. Artificial intelligence techniques such Artificial Neural Narworks (ANN) are used for model development. The developed ‘models are in excellent agreement with practice since the artificial intelligence techniques ‘pointed out the importance of the same parameters as was known from practical experience The models show eg. that if the bitumen content by mass of PAC wearing courses is less than 4% only @ poor performance of that layer can be expected. The developed ‘models are the first ones that allow ‘quantitative prediction the effect of mixture composition, traffic and climate on the performance of PAC. ‘xevwoRDs: Porous Asphalt Concrete, Ravelling, Artificial Neural Networks, Visual Condition. ‘DOI10.3166/RMPD.10HS.263-280 © 2009 Lavoisier, Paris Road Materials and Pavement Design. ICAM 2009, pages 263 to 280264 Road Materials and Pavement Design. ICAM 2009 1, Introduction PAC wearing courses are extensively used in the Netherlands for the main highway network. Nowadays approximately 75% of this network has a PAC top layer. The main reason for applying such layers is noise reduction. In a densely populated country like the Netherlands, approximately 25% of the inhabitants are hindered by noise and for that reason noise reduction is a hot issue on the agenda of politicians and road authorities. For noise reducing purposes, PAC layers should have a void content of at least 20%. Such an open structure is vulnerable for the effects of traffic and climate and the average lifetime of PAC top layers is about 11 years. However, the lifetime of PAC is highly variable; lifetimes as short as 4 years, and as Jong as 16 years have been reported. It is clear that short lifetimes are very undesirable. They not only cause increased maintenance costs but also result extensive traffic delays due to maintenance works on the very busy highways. Because of all this, the Dutch Ministry of Transport is looking for methods and tools to improve the lifetime of PAC and to increase its cost effectiveness. PAC e.g. is 1.5 times more expensive than the traditional dense asphalt concrete (DAC) wearing courses which have an average lifetime of about 15 years. Since one only can improve the performance of materials and structures if one understands why they behave as they do, a research project was commissioned to the Road and Railway Engineering Department of the Delft University of Technology, to analyse the performance of a large number of test sections and to derive from the available performance, traffic and mixture data models which allow the prediction of ravelling on PAC wearing courses. Ravelling models had to be developed because this damage type controls the lifetime of PAC top layers, This paper describes the development of such models. First of all the available data base will be discussed which is followed by a short discussion on Artificial ‘Neural Networks (ANN), a technique that was used for model development. After that the results will be presented. Finally a short discussion will be given about the results obtained and the paper will end with some conclusions. In the next chapter however, a short introduction on PAC will be given and the differences in mixture composition between PAC and DAC will be shown. 2. Porous asphalt concrete Figure 1 shows the composition by weight and the volumetric composition of ‘both DAC and PAC. Information on the gradation of PAC is given in Table 1. According to the specifications, the minimum void content should be 20% in order to achieve the required 3 dB(A) reduction in noise level. Performance Models PAC 265 : ° z asphak concrete] 5 B Dense asphalt concrete | 30 ape aor Be a 7 S 40 3 » Fy 2 stone Sand Filler Binder Mix composition Figure 1. Composition by volume of aggregate, Vb = volume of bitumen, the mineral aggregate skeleton Table 1. Gradation of PAC Sieve/Aggregate size (mm) —enanico | €16.0- 11.2 C112-8.0 C8.0-56 C5.6-2.0 2.0 - 0.063 < 0.063 mass and volumetric composition of DAC and PAC. Va = Vv = void content, VMA = voids in RAW Spec. % retained 0-5 15-30 50-65 70-85 85 95 100 (Filler: Wigro 60K) Perrperr re cereseeee PEPE SEES eee Bitumen 70/100 4.5% by weight266 Road Materials and Pavement Design. ICAM 2009 3. Data base From 1990 to 2000, a large research pro; was ing ii called SHRP-NL (CROW, 1996), (CROW. 2002), This eee lapthparaae copy of the long termn pavement performance program of the Strategie 1 ie Research Program (SHRP) that was running in the USA in that period. In the sane NI project visual condition surveys were made on a yearly basis on a large mavky of pavement sections. This also included 34 sections with a PAC wearin; os oat the PAC sections were part of the main highway system in the Netherlands. Each section had a length of 300 m and was divided in three subsections of 1 tn In front of and behind the 300 m section 3 cores were taken which wor ued determine the mixture composition. Of each core the gradation, the bitumen eons and the void content was determined. Also the type of aggregate used i whe mixtures was determined. No information was collected on the penetrati 7 softening point of the recovered bitumen, eet Also the date on which the wearing cot : 1 v 'g Course was constructed was known. Limit information was available on the amount of traffic. In most cases only the fe intensity was known on a specific date as well as the percentage of track traffic and Q ximum daily temperature is higher th 25°C, and the number of cold days, these are the number of days at which the minimum temperature is below 0°C, was available, i Visual condition surveys Condition data were collected by means of visual conditior used is described in (CROW, 1987). In this method the severity ofthe pia oa classified according to Light (L), Moderate (M) and Severe (S) damage. The amount of damage is mapped implying that as accurate as possible sketches are made of the damage visible at the pavement surface. After ample consideration it was decided not to model the growth of L, M and § damage individually but to model the growth of ravelling using an overall indicator called i mag v M Meq is calculated following: eee eee ane Meq=0.25L4+M+5§ where: L = percentage of the surface showing light damage, M_ = percentage of the surface showing moderate damage S__ = percentage of the surface showing severe damage, Hepes cae Performance Models PAC 267 It is a well known fact that ravelling can appear in different ways. It can be present in the wheel paths, as a type of diffuse ravelling over the entire pavement surface and as localised ravelling induced e.g. by the fact that the asphalt spreading machine had to stop for some time which resulted in a cool down of the mixture and insufficient compaction afterwards. From the drawings that were made, these types of ravelling could be discriminated but after ample consideration it was decided to characterise the amount and severity of ravelling with only one value for Meq. The main reason for this choice was that there were too less data points for modelling of each of the three types of ravelling. The second reason was that no cores were taken at those specific locations making the development of a relationship between the type of ravelling and the mixture impossible. 4. Data preparation 4.1. General Data preparation for modelling purposes includes data cleaning, variable selection/reduction and data sealing. First of all however, decisions had to be taken on how to deal with the available information. Each 300m test section consisted of 3 subsections of 100m. Of each of these subsections the visual condition had been determined. The cores that were available to determine the mixture composition ete had been taken in front of and behind of the 300m section. One option to deal with the data was to take the average of the Meq ravelling values that could be calculated from the Meq values of each of the 3 subsections. In that case also the average mixture composition as determined from the 6 cores could be taken as input. The problem however was that the Meq values of the 3 subsections within the 300m section quite often showed a considerable variation. Furthermore, taking each 300m section as one data point would only result in 34 data points. This number was considered to be too low for effective modelling. Therefore it was decided to take each 100m long subsection as a data point, resulting in 102 data points. The problem was then how to determine the mixture composition for each of those subsections. Since cores were taken 16m 13m and 10m in front of and behind of the 300m section, it was decided to take the average of the mixture composition data determined from the 3 cores in front of the section as being representative for the mixture composition of the first 100m subsection. The average composition values determined from the cores taken behind the 300m section were taken as being representative for the last 100m subsection. For the middle 100m subsection the median values determined from the 6 cores were taken as being representative for this subsection. The authors fully agree that this way of assigning mixture characteristics to the 3 subsections can be debated. One should however realise that no other data was268 Road Materials and Pavement Design. ICAM 2009 available and choices had to be made. The ones made seemed to be the most realistic ones. 4.2. Data cleaning First of all it was checked whether the data set was containing outliers. The method used was the one described by (Renze, 2008) and is based on defining a certain fence beyond which data can be considered to be an outlier, A fence can 1.5 to 3 times the interquartile, An interquartile is defined by the value that is exceeded by 25% of the data and by the value that is exceeded by 75% of the data. Using this method it was clear that outliers existed in the variable “type of stone” and in the Meg. The dataset contained information about PAC mixtures made with 4 different types of aggregate being: crushed siliceous river gravel, Porphyry, Greywacke/Grey- quartsite, and Greywacke. Phorphyry was used in only 2 sections while Grey- wacke/Greyquartsite was used in 3 sections, The majority of the sections were made with crushed siliceous river gravel. The presence of the 2 Porphyry sections and 3 Greywacke/Greyquartsite sections in the dataset might very well confuse the learning process in the ANN model development. Therefore it was decided to delete these 5 sections from the dataset. ‘The dataset on Meq 5 years after construction did not contain outliers. However the dataset on Meq 8 years after construction contained 5 data points with an excessive high Meg. Surprisingly the bitumen content of those sections was fairly high (around 4.6% by mass) while the void content was very low (around 15% while a minimum of 20% is required). All in all no real reason could be found to delete these five data points from the dataset. Therefore it was decided to develop a model for the prediction of Meq 8 years after construction by using all data points, by leaving out all outliers, by leaving out outliers one by one and by leaving out combinations of outliers. The influence of leaving in and taking out outliers from the dataset on the goodness of fit (1°) was determined and finally it was decided to leave out only 3 of the 5 outliers. 43. Variable selection Table 2 shows the available input variables. It is obvious that one should not use all the mixture information for model development. This is because a number of these parameters are cross correlated. Density e.g. is inversely related to void content and bitumen content and it is therefore not wise to use all three variables in the model. Furthermore one has to realize that the number of data points is relatively small and the number of input parameters should therefore be limited as much as possible. Performance Models PAC 269 Table 2. Available input and output Seer eee cere eeeere cee cece ceed cece cece eee earner cee Input variables Be) duit Laasc a nSSH SSE SESE HnadsOSABGDESOGHISQUAIOMAIARinaanoaasoOns Mixture density [kg/m] Bitumen content by mass [%] Void content [%] Percentage fine aggregate < 2mm Percentage coarse aggregate > 2mm Cu=D60/D10 50 sieve size through which 50% of the coarse aggregate passes CWD cumulative amount of hot days CCD cumulative amount of cold days CDS cumulative duration of sunshine CR cumulative amount of rain CT cumulative amount of traffic Output variables ‘Meg ravelling 5 years after construction Meg ravelling 8 years after construction ‘A number of variable selection procedures were therefore used and a comparison was made of the variables that were selected ‘by the various algorithms. Those variables which were selected by most of the methods were considered to be the most influential variables. ‘The following input selection methods were used: — regression trees (Morgan and Sonquist, 1963), ~ genetic polynomial regression (Maertens er al., 2006), i — artificial neural network (weighted weight factor method) (Haykin, 1999), rough set theory (Pawlak, 1997), — correlation based subset selection using bidirectional search, — correlation based subset selection using genetic search, — wrapper of artificial neural network using genetic search, ~ relief ranking filter (Kira and Rendell, 1992). For backgrounds about the various methods, the reader is referred to the literature.270 Road Materials and Pavement Design. ICAM 2009 Table 3 shows the most important variables that were selected by the vatious Performance Models PAC 271 able 4. Variables as selected by various algorithms and ranked according fo cross validation algorithms for the prediction of Meq ravelling 5 years after construction. Table 4 importance for the prediction of ravelling 8 years after construction gives the same information for Meq ravelling 8 years after construction. hi a . riabl Variable Variable Variable Variable __ Table 3 shows that “bitumen content” was selected by all algorithms as the most Metnoa sering Ye Vat 3 4 5 important variable for the prediction of Meq ravelling 5 years after construction. The variable CT was selected as an important variable by all methods but one. Other ‘Regression Leave-one-out Bitumen Voids, Cold a coarse Density variables that were often selected were CCD, “void content”, and “percentage trees cross validation content content days coarse”. Genetic Polynomial Voids Bitumen oe %Coarse Density ; s ‘ = content content Ravelling 8 years after construction (Table 4) seems to be mostly influenced by polynomial een sn the “void content”and “bitumen content”. Next to them CCD, “percentage coarse” Astitical Leweoneout Voids Cold BINED gC oarse Traffic and “density” were selected. neural network — cross validation content days content (WWE) Bitumen Voids : Rough Sets 3-class output content content Table 3. Variables ranked according to importance as selected by various aaa algorithms for the model to predict ravelling 5 years after construction Greedy stepwise 4 ing 5 years aft based subset ides Voids Bitumen Cold ee eae nee 1 Leave-one-out content ‘content, days iy saith a erable a Vaiate arabe careeiat ‘eros validation Regression Leave-one-out Bitumen Voids ig Correlation- ; : trees cross validation content TM™ffic Cold days onteny "Coarse based subset Geretic'Search voids Bitumen pengiy Cold days DSO Genetis Poly selection Leaye-one-out content content jenetic ‘olynomial degree Bitumen céCoame Voids (genetic cross validation polynomial =3 content Traffic Cold days %4Comse content search) Artificial neural Genetic Search Leave-one-out Bitumen Voids: ‘Wrappers of Voids network aaa Traffic Cold days %Ce pre ‘Leave-one-out oi CWF) cross validation content content ys oe ANN (genetic a5 validation content 7 search) K=20 Rough sets 2-class output semetrd ‘ tpt content Camis Nearest neighbor Gog Voids Bitumen Warm acy Correlation- 7 filter ‘S Leave-one-out gays content content days based subset Ore stepwise cross validation selection 2 Traffic Cold day ‘Leave-one-out content a : js i is Cigesetonal cross validation Not all methods make it possible to determine the exact importance ranking, | sue ‘Two of the methods which give a rather clear ranking are genetic polynomial o cage Genetic Search. a regression and artificial neural networks (weighted weight factor). The ranking : —- Leave-one-out Bimen atric NOES Cold days %6Cose obtained by these two methods is shown in Figures 2 and 3. cross validation 4 : : a , a itis remarkable to notice that both genetic polynomial regression and artificis! ‘Wrappers of Genetic Search neural networks ranked the cumulative amount of traffic as a rather Saupe ANN (genetic Leaverone-out Bitumen ae viable for the prediction of ravelling 8 years after construction. This doesn’t mean search) cross validation content rams f traffic is relatively much less iaiitd k=20 That traffic has no effect. It implies that the effect of traffic i i Nearest neighbor than the effect of the other variables. It indicates that ravelling that ca ful : ur + i i iti ol /S) Relief ranking (equal influence) Bitumen large number of years is much more influenced by climatic conditions (cold day: filter Leave-one-out, ‘content ‘Treffie Cold days than by traffic.272 Road Materials and Pavement Design. ICAM 2009 Genetic polynomial input selection for Meq (raveling) five years after construction 8 3 Es S38 2 = 3 E£ Bitumen Voids Coarse Colddays Traffic content content percentage ‘The five most influential input variables ‘Genetic polynomial input selection for Meq. (raveling) eight ° eee years atter construction 8 100 : £ — 3 eee Es £e PEE eeee eee eee 3s s. aH 3 a a e Bitumen Voids Coarse Density Cold days E content content percentage The five most influential input variables Figure 2. Variables selecied by genetic polynomial for the ravelling model 5 years (top figure) and 8 years (bottom figure) after construction Neural network-based input selection for Meg (raveling) five sp 37 years after construction ge fs gS gs gs $2 28 FE Bitumen Veidscontent Coarse Cold days Tralfe content percentage The five most inflevential input variable Performance Models PAC 273 Neural network-based input selection for hteq (raveling) eight years after construction tothe training ad Bitumen Voids Coarse Colddays Traffic content content percentage The relative percentage of contribution ‘The five most inflevential input variable Figure 3. Variables selected by artificial neural network for the ravelling model 5 years (top figure) and 8 years (bottom figure) after construction 4.4. Data scaling All variables selected were numerical variables but took different values. The amount of traffic e.g. is given in millions while the bitumen content is given as a percentage value. In such a case scaling of data is required because the incompatibility of the measurement units may affect the model results. Therefore the numerical input values as well as the output value were scaled to the range of [-1, 1]. This was done as follows. SF = (SRinax ~ SRuin) / Xmx ~ Xan) X= SRuin + SF (X — Xan) Where: i SF =scaling factor, SRain = lower scaling limit (+1), SRonox = upper scaling limit (1), Xpin = minimum value of variable X, Xinax = maximum value of variable X, X — =value of variable X, X, =scaled value of variable X. 5. Modelling using artificial neural networks In the previous part the selection of the most important input parameters has been discussed. Based on this selection it was decided to develop the following models.274 Road Materials and Pavement Design. ICAM 2009 Megs = fibitumen content, void content, percentage coarse aggregate, cumulative number of cold days, cumulative amount of traffic) Meg& = f(bitumen content, void content, percentage coarse aggregate, cumulative number of cold days). In these equations Meq$ is the Meq that occurs 5 years after construction, while ‘Meg is the Meq that occurs 8 years after construction. The parameters necessary to develop an ANN model are the type of activation fanction, the number of hidden neuron layers, the type of learning algorithm, the Jearning rate and the momentum. The architecture that was finally selected for the Meq models that predict the ravelling 5 and 8 years after construction was one hidden layer containing three hidden neurons (Miradi, 2009). The hyperbolic tangent was chosen as the activation function for both hidden and output layers. ‘The batch back propagation learning algorithm with a learning rate of 0.1 and a momentum of 0.3 showed to give the best results for the model Meq ravelling 5 years after construction. The same learning algorithm was used for the Meq model that predicted ravelling 8 years after construction. The learning rate for this model was 0.1 and the momentum 0.2. The training set consisted of 85% of the data while 15% of the data points were used as test set. Part of the training set was used for cross validation purposes. The “leave one out” method was used for cross validation. Figures 4 and 5 show the ANN models for ravelling 5 respectively 8 years after construction. Training data Predicted Meq{ravellng) $ years after construction 4 3 5 7 9 at 13, Actual Meq(raveling) 5 years after construction Figure 4a. Prediction of ravelling 5 years after construction by means of ANN for the training set Testing data anws 3 Predicted Meqfraveling) 6 years after construction ANB a ODEO 7234 5678 9 01 12 18 Actual Meq(raveling) 5 years after construction the test set ‘Traning data ning a ge 8 19) 8 years after constuction a) oS ‘etual Mea(raveling) 8 years after contruction the training set Performance Models PAC 275 Figure 4b. Prediction of ravelling 5 years after construction by means of ANN for Figure Sa. Prediction of ravelling 8t years after construction by means of ANN for276 Road Materials and Pavement Design. ICAM 2009 Testing data | | | Predicted Meq(raveling) 8 years after construction 0-2 4 6 6 10 12 1416 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 Actual Meq (raveling) 8 years after construction Figure Sb. Prediction of ravelling 8t years after construction by means of ANN for the test set Figure 6 shows that the prediction of the Meq ravelling 5 years after construction is not very accurate for the low Meq values (range 0 - 4). The explanation for this is the following. Each 300m section was divided into 3 subsections of 100m. Each 100m section was considered to be one data point because each 100m subsection showed a different amount of ravelling. However, the amount of traffic and the climatic conditions are exactly the same for these sections. Furthermore the mixture data (void content etc) obtained from the six cores did not show too much variation in a number of cases. All this implies that some amount of scatter is introduced because of the lack of accurate data. Furthermore misinterpretation by the inspectors of the actual amount and severity of ravelling has affected the Meq value. This effect is larger at low Meq values than at high Meq values. Because all of this it is understandable that, especially at the low levels of Meq, some mismatch between the observed and calculated Megq values occurs. 6. Interpretation of the ANN models One of the tools for the interpretation of the ANN results is the response graph. By means of response graphs one can determine how the model reacts if one variable is varied while the others are kept constant. Figure 6 gives examples of such response graphs for the prediction of ravelling 8 years after construction. The Performance Models PAC 277 constant value that was used for each variable was the average value of that parameter determined from the entire dataset. This resulted in the following values. — bitumen content 4.3%, —void content 18.5%, — percentage coarse aggregate 83.1%, —number of cold days 314. ‘The trends that are shown in Figures 6a to 6d are quite logical. They show for instance that the amount of ravelling is increasing rapidly if the bitumen content is Jower than 4% (Figure 6a). This finding is fully supported with the behaviour of PAC as observed in the field. Figure 6b also is in agreement with practice since it shows that ravelling increases if the void content increases. The same is true for Figures 6c and 64. It is a well known fact e.g, that ravelling mainly occurs at the end or immediately after the winter period. Research done by Hagos (2008) supports this finding. ‘All in all it is concluded that the model predicting ravelling 8 years after construction is a logical one. Although not discussed here, the same was concluded for the model predicting ravelling 5 years after construction. ‘Mea (aveting) 8 years after constcution 3 og @ 8 8 8 ¢ 8 388 Bkuman content Figure 6a. Response graph for bitumen content (ravelling 8 years after construction)278 Road Materials and Pavement Design. ICAM 2009 2 tea (raveting) 8 years after const 8 18 7 1B 18 2 Mt esd Voids content Figure 6b. Response graph for void content (ravelling 8 years afier construction) & Meg (raveling) eight years after construction 84 85 Coarse percentage Figure 6c. Response graph for percentage coarse aggregate (ravelling 8 years after construction) Performance Models PAC 279 ‘Meq(raveling) 8 years after construction 215) Cold days 310 350 Figure 6d. Response graph for nr of cold days (ravelling 8 years after construction) 7. Conclusions Based on the results of this research project, the following conclusions are drawn, — Artificial intelligence tools have shown to be extremely useful to derive meaningful models from datasets, ~ The derived ravelling models give results that are in excellent agreement with findings from practice. From practice e.g. it was known that bitumen content, void content, amount of traffic and winter weather all have an effect on the amount of ravelling that can be expected. The models show that these factors are indeed the most important factors controlling ravelling. ~The models developed in this project allow quantifying the effect of the different parameters. It was clearly shown e.g. that a bitumen content of less than 4% by mass results in unsatisfactory performance of porous asphalt concrete. Since the effect of mixture parameters on ravelling is quantified by the models, they also allow mixtures with improved performance to be designed. Furthermore the models allow to fine tune the current specifications for porous asphalt concrete resulting in a better quality product. ~ It is emphasized that the presented models are the first ones ever developed that allow quantification of the effect of mixture composition, traffic and climatic condition on the lifetime, in terms of ravelling, of porous asphalt concrete. — Variable selection is a very important part of model development. Much attention should be paid to this aspect.280 Road Materials and Pavement Design. ICAM 2009 — When setting up data bases using in situ payement data, itis very important to “think first and do next”. This is absolutely needed to overcome that unnecessary data are collected and to avoid not collecting necessary data, 8. Bibliography CROW “Schadecatalogus voor de visuele inspectie”, Mededeling 60, Ede, 1987. CROW “Wegverhardingen op termijn bekeken”, Ede, 1996. CROW “Modellen voor Wegheheer”, Publicatie 169, Ede, 2002. Hagos E.T., The effect of aging on the binder properties of porous asphalt concrete, PuD Dissertation, Delft University of Technology, Delft, 2008. Haykin, S., Neural networks: a comprehensive foundation, (2 edition), Prentice Hall, 1999 Kira K., Rendell L., “A practical approach to feature selection”, International Conference on Machine Learning, Aberdeen, 1992 Maertens, K., Baerdemaeker, J.D,, Babuska, R., “Genetic polynominal regression as input selection algorithm for non-linear identification”, Soft Computing, Vol. 10, No. 9, 2006 Miradi M., Knowledge discovery and pavement performance, PhD Dissertation, Delft University of Technology, Delft, 2009. Morgan IN., Sonquist J.A., “Problems in the analysis of survey data, and a proposal”, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 58, 1963. Pawlak Z., Rough sets: theoretical aspects of reasoning about data, Kluwer Academic Publisher, Dordrecht, 1991, Pawlak Z., Rough sets. Rough sets and data mining, Lin T.Y., Cercone, N., ed., Kluwer ‘Academic Publisher, Dordrecht, 1997. Renze J., Outlier, E.W. Weisstein, ed. MathWorld-a Wolftam Web Resource, http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Outlier.html, 2008