Determination of Mechanical Properties of Cement Asphalt

Mortar via UPV Method

Kechao Qiu 1; Huisu Chen 2; Wei Sun 3; Lu Sun 4; Jinxiang Hong 5; and Guotang Zhao 6
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Abstract: To determine the mechanical properties of cement asphalt mortar (CAM) in the field, this contribution first presents a model to
elaborate the relationship of strength to ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV). Next, a mechanical test (compressive, flexural strength, and static
modulus) and a UPV test are conducted on CAM at different ages to calibrate the proposed model. Finally, three fitted formulas are estab-
lished based on the proposed model and verified with additional test results. Results suggest that a UPV test is a helpful method for estimating
the mechanical properties of CAM in the field and can reach a high precision. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)MT.1943-5533.0000939. © 2014
American Society of Civil Engineers.
Author keywords: Cement asphalt mortar; Mechanical properties; UPV test; Strength determination.

Introduction
A nonballast slab track consists of a concrete roadbed, reinforced
concrete track slab, and cement asphalt mortar (CA mortar or
CAM) injected between roadbed and track slab (Qiu 2013). It is
an advanced nonballast track form that has many applications in
high-speed railways in Japan, Germany, Spain, and China (Qiu
2013; Koyama 1997; Wang et al. 2008a) due to its manifold
advantages, such as, for example, reduction in structure height,
lower maintenance requirements, and increased service life (Qiu
2013; Harada et al. 1983; Harada 1974, 1976). The safety, stability,
and comfortable degree of the nonballast slab track are closely
related to the properties of CAM.
CAM is one of the key components in the structure of slab track
(Fig. 1), which mainly consists of cement matrix, asphalt emulsion,
fine aggregates, and a variety of admixtures (Harada et al. 1983;
Harada 1974, 1976). The development of mechanical properties
of CAM at early ages is important to the subsequent construction
steps and volume stability of the railway structure. Researchers
have widely investigated this issue. Wang et al. (2010) studied the
temperature effect on the compressive strength of CAM and
put forward a temperature stability coefficient to indicate the
temperature dependence. An increasing asphalt emulsion-cement
1
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Construction Materials, School of Material
Science and Engineering, Southeast Univ., 1 Dongnandaxue Rd., Nanjing
211189, China. E-mail: qiukehcao@126.com
2
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Construction Materials, School of Material
Science and Engineering, Southeast Univ., 1 Dongnandaxue Rd., Nanjing
211189, China (corresponding author). E-mail: chenhs@seu.edu.cn
3
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Construction Materials, School of Material
Science and Engineering, Southeast Univ., 1 Dongnandaxue Rd., Nanjing
211189, China. E-mail: sunwei@seu.edu.cn
4 From Table 1 we can obtain the most popular formula:
School of Transportation, Southeast Univ., 1 Dongnandaxue Rd.,
Nanjing 211189, China. E-mail: sunl@cua.edu
5
Jiangsu Subote New Materials Co., 12 Beijingxi Rd., Nanjing 210008,
China. E-mail: hongjinxiang@cnjsjk.cn
6
Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway Co., 5 Beifengwo Rd., Beijing
100038, China. E-mail: jhzhao2011@qq.com
Note. This manuscript was submitted on April 18, 2013; approved on
September 9, 2013; published online on September 11, 2013. Discussion
period open until August 13, 2014; separate discussions must be submitted
for individual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Materials in Civil
Engineering, © ASCE, ISSN 0899-1561/04014009(5)/$25.00.
ratio (A/C) can increase temperature dependence, prolong the set-
ting process of CAM (Wang et al. 2008a), and increase its viscosity
(Wang et al. 2008b). Wang et al. (2012) also applied a laser
diffraction technique, studied the stability of asphalt emulsion,
and concluded that temperature and polyoxyethylene had a signifi-
cant influence on emulsion stability. Few publications focus on
on-site service state detection. From an engineering point of view,
the formation of the structure and the service state detection require
urgent characterization using an accurate, cost-effective measure-
ment method. In concrete systems, a variety of techniques are used
to estimate the structure formation and evaluate the on-site service
state, such as a conventional laboratory strength test method, re-
bound method, and pull-out; all these methods are limited in
their range of application. However, the ultrasonic pulse velocity
(UPV) test measurement, a nondestructive method, could be a
method to evaluate the on-site structure formation of materials.
The UPV technique is one of the most popular nondestructive
techniques (NDTs) in the assessment of material properties in the
field and in the laboratory and has been used for many years in
materials and mining sciences (Aghayani and Niroumand 2011;
Deng and Lee 2002; Trtnik et al. 2009; Voigt et al. 2006; Moradian
and Behnia 2009; Washer et al. 2004). Many researchers, for ex-
ample, Singher (1997), Deng and Lee (2002), Yasar and Erdogan
(2004), Voigt et al. (2006), Trtnik et al. (2009), and Aghayani and
Niroumand (2011), have studied the relations between material
properties and sound velocity. They have found that sound velocity
is closely related to material properties and proven that the UPV
measurement is an effective tool for the state assessment of materi-
als on site (Trtnik et al. 2009; Voigt et al. 2006). In cement-based
composites, a relationship between strength (S), an important
mechanical property, and UPV has been proposed and is presented
in Table 1, together with the coefficients of determination R2 .
S ¼ a × expðbV p Þ ð1Þ
where a and b are empirical parameters determined by experimen-
tal methods.
In this paper, a conventional strength test was applied to
investigate the process of development of the mechanical properties
of CAM, and a UPV measurement method was used to establish a
correlation relationship between the UPV and mechanical proper-
ties. Specifically, the process of the development of mechanical

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J. Mater. Civ. Eng., 2014, 26(6): 04014009

 mixture proportion was used with a water–cement ratio of 0.5
and asphalt–cement ratio of 0.274, as shown in Table 2.

Experimental Methods
CAM specimen prisms with sizes of 70 × 70 × 280 mm and 100 ×
100 × 300 mm were casted. In total, 18 samples were prepared for
the strength test and 18 samples for the static modulus test, that is,
three replicates for each test of the curing age and size. In addition,
two more groups of replicated specimens were prepared to verify
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the proposed model. First, fresh CAM was cast into a mold without
vibration after mixing. Then the mold was removed after 24 h
and the specimens were cured, first at 20
1°C and 95% relative
humidity for 7 days and subsequently at 20
1°C and 65% relative
Fig. 1. Schematic of Bögl slab track structures (reprinted from Inter- humidity. At curing ages of 3, 7, 28, 56, 90, and 180 days,
national Journal of Fatigue, vol. 51, Kechao Qiu, Huisu Chen, Haiping the flexural strength, compressive strength, and static Young’s
Ye, Jinxiang Hong, Wei Sun, Jinyang Jiang, “Thermo-mechanical modulus were tested using MTS 810 universal testing machine ac-
coupling effect on fatigue behavior of cement asphalt mortar,” cording to Chinese National Standards GB/T 17671-1999 and
pp. 116–120, Copyright 2013, with permission from Elsevier) GB 50107-2010.
A portable ultrasonic tester was used to evaluate the ultrasonic
wave velocity of the mortar specimens, as shown as Fig. 2. The
Table 1. Relationships between Strength and UPV in Cementitious transducers used were 38 mm in diameter and had a maximum
Materials resonant frequency of 54 kHz. The velocities of the P waves were
Equation (S in MPa and V p in m=s) R2 Reference calculated from the measured travel time and the distance between
the transmitter and the receiver. The measured travel time was, in
S ¼ 1.146 exp (0.77V p ) 0.80 Turgut (2004)
S ¼ 1.19 exp (0.715V p ) 0.59 Nash’t et al. (2005) fact, the sum of the real time interval through a specimen plus the
S ¼ 8.4 × 10−9 ðV p × 103 Þ2.5921 0.42 Kheder (1999)a time delay due to the electronic components, transducer, and bonds.
S ¼ 1.2 × 10−5 ðV p × 103 Þ1.7447 0.41 Kheder (1999)b Thus, before measurement of the travel time, the time delay
S ¼ exp½ð−3.3
1.8Þþ 0.48 Del Rio et al. (2004) was determined for a P wave, either by means of a standard
ð0.0014
0.0004ÞðV p × 103 Þ (e.g., aluminum specimen of known velocity) or face-to-face
S ¼ 0.1414 exp (0.0015V p ) 0.97 Gül et al. (2006) method (Starzec 1999). The samples were tested in dry conditions
Note: S = compressive strength. at room temperature. Additionally, an ultrasonic couplant was used
a
For wet concrete. to improve the surface contact between the transducers and test
b samples, resulting in a significant improvement in the signal-
For dry concrete.
to-noise ratio. Moreover, three measurements were taken at each
sample along the longest side of the samples; the coefficient of
properties in CAM (CRTS II) is first demonstrated and then some variation is elaborated by error bars in Fig. 3(a).
formulas are established to evaluate the flexural strength, f f ,
compressive strength, fc , and static modulus, E, of CAM.
Results and Discussions

Materials and Methods

Development of Mechanical Properties

Materials Fig. 3(b) shows the evolution of the strength and static modulus of
CAM with curing ages. It is found that the flexural and compres-
The materials used in this experiment are a cement and sand sive strengths and static modulus all keep a relative high growth
mixture, asphalt emulsion, water, a water-reducing agent, and an rate in the first 28 days and grow slowly thereafter. The flexural
antifoaming agent. The mixture proportion is shown in Table 2. strength, compressive strength, and static modulus at 28 days are
The cement and sand mixture is one of cement (35% by mass), 72.3, 72.0, and 82.8% of the strength values at 180 days, respec-
fine sand, and other functional additive powders; the asphalt tively, and at 56 days are approximate 78.2, 85.0, and 89.9%,
emulsion is a styrene butadiene styrene (SBS)-modified rapid respectively. This indicates that there is no significant difference
curing cationic asphalt emulsion, and the dosage of asphalt in in flexural strength, compressive strength, and static modulus be-
the emulsion is 60% by mass. tween curing ages of 28 and 56 days, that is, the strength-
increasing rate is relatively slow after 28 days and the strength
of CAM at 28 days reflects the actual service strength in the
Mix Proportion
structure. It is suggested that the strength at 28 days be adopted
To investigate the evolution of the mechanical properties of CAM for the structure design and determination of the following con-
and the correlations between the UPV and strength, only one struction procedures. By least-squares regression, the strengths
and curing ages were correlated with exponential relations
(Moradian and Behnia 2009):
Table 2. Mixture Proportion of CAM (kg=m3 )
for flexural strength:
Cement and sand Asphalt Water Water Antifoamer
mixture emulsion reducer ff ¼ 0.82 × ln t þ 1.68; R2 ¼ 0.99 ð2Þ
1,000 160 110 1.4 0.05
for compressive strength:

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 Test
Receiver Points
Transmitter

CAM Sample
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UPV Tester

(a) (b)

Fig. 2. Schematic of test devices

Fig. 3. Strength, static modulus, and UPV of CAM evolution with curing age: (a) time-dependent evolution of ultrasonic velocity in CAM sample;
(b) time dependent mechanical performance of CAM

fc ¼ 4.25 × ln t þ 7.31; R2 ¼ 0.94 ð3Þ

and for static modulus:

E ¼ 1.70 × ln t þ 5.85; R2 ¼ 0.97 ð4Þ

where in Eqs. (2)–(4) f f = flexural strength (MPa); f c = compres-

sive strength (MPa); E = static modulus (GPa); and t = curing age
of the specimens (day).

Calibration of Proposed Model via UPV

The proposed model, Eq. (1), is calibrated using the tested
ultrasonic velocity (V p ) and tested mechanical values. As shown
in Fig. 4, the strength formation of CAM is consistent with an
increase in the ultrasonic velocity (V p ), and a good correlation
is found between V p and the mechanical values of CAM by fitting
the exponential relation shown in Eq. (1). Fig. 4. Strength and static Young’s modulus of CAM plotted against
Software Grapher version 9.0 was used to analyze the test data UPV
and estimate the variance. The regression parameters are shown in
Table 3. Since the correlation coefficients are relatively high, the
proposed regression formulas can be used to predict the evolution
of CAM mechanical properties. Table 3. Regression Parameters for CAM
Mechanical properties a b R2
Verification of Proposed Model Flexural strength 0.057 1.28 × 10–3 0.924
Additional experiments were conducted to verify the applicability Compressive strength 0.134 1.49 × 10−3 0.869
Static modulus 0.409 0.982 × 10–3 0.856
of the UPV test in estimating CAM mechanical properties. The data

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Fig. 5. Estimation results plotted against measured data
from each test were used to calculate the estimated strength in the
respective proposed model. The estimated values of flexural
strength, compressive strength, and static modulus were plotted
against the measured values for each test. The error in the estimated
value is represented by the distance that each data point plots from
the equality line (Kahraman 2001) (Fig. 5). A point lying on the
line indicates an exact estimation.
As shown in Fig. 5, the estimated and measured values of
strength are approximately distributed around a 1∶1 diagonal line
with an equal distance, suggesting that the best and most reliable
way to estimate the strength of CAM is by using the UPV. For
flexural values higher than 4 MPa, the points are under the 1∶1
diagonal line, indicating that for flexural strength values higher
than 4 MPa, the estimated flexural strength values are smaller than
the measured flexural values. The same phenomenon was also ob-
served for compressive strength and static modulus, but for the
compressive and static modulus, the data points fell closer to
the 1∶1 diagonal line and were less scattered at higher values.
Conclusions
The UPV test is an indirect test method to predict the mechanical
properties of CAM. Based on the research work discussed here, the
following conclusions can be drawn:
1. The strength of CAM increases with curing age and the
stiffness of CAM at 28 days is sufficient to reflect the actual
service strength in the structure.
2. The proposed model is consistent with experimental results,
and the correlation between UPV values and strength
© ASCE 04014009-4
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(including flexural strength, compressive strength, and static
modulus) in CAM are exponential.
3. The UPV test can be applied to estimate the mechanical
properties and evaluate damage states both in the laboratory
and on site.
It should be emphasized that the influence of the environment
(temperature and relative humidity) is not considered in the present
work. To achieve high precision, further study is required to
incorporate the effects of the environment.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the
Scientific Research and Development Program of the Ministry
of Railways (Grant 2008G031-F-01), Open Foundation from the
State Key Laboratory of High Performance Engineering Materials
(Grant 2010CEM001), and the National Natural Science Founda-
tion of China (Grant U1134206).
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