778 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO.
1, JANUARY 2023
Compaction Prediction for Asphalt Mixtures Using
Wireless Sensor and Machine Learning Algorithms
Shuai Yu
Abstract— Compaction is a critical step in asphalt roadway
construction to determine the pavement’s quality and service life.
Current field compactions are mainly based on test strips and
engineers’ experiences. Such empirical-based approaches some-
times cause compaction problems especially when new materials
are implemented. Intelligent compaction (IC) technology was
invented to improve compaction quality. The real-time collection
and visualization of the pavement responses and temperature
can greatly improve compaction uniformity. However, the mate-
rial viscoelastic property and the complex pavement structure
still hinder the establishment of the correlation between the
Intelligent Compaction Measurement Value (ICMV) and the
compactability of asphalt pavement. This paper aims to establish
compaction prediction models based on machine learning (ML)
algorithms and sensing technology. Given the strong correlation
between the mixture’s compactability and the particle compaction
characteristics, a particle-size wireless sensor, SmartRock, was
used to collect the particle kinematic behaviors during com-
paction. 11 asphalt mixtures were compacted with an embedded
SmartRock sensor. Three ML models and three dataset scenarios
were applied to predict the compaction condition, and a higher
than 98% prediction accuracy was achieved. The results revealed
that combining the ML approach and sensing data is appropriate
and practical for predicting the compaction condition of the
asphalt mixture. Future studies shall further evaluate the algo-
rithm based on field compaction data so that intelligent sensing
technology can be implemented to improve compaction quality.
Index Terms— Asphalt mixture, compaction prediction,
machine learning, particle characteristics, sensing technology.
I. I NTRODUCTION
C OMPACTION is one of the most critical steps in asphalt
roadway construction, which ultimately determines the
quality and service life of the pavement [1]. An asphalt mixture
with a desirable design could perform poorly if it has not
acquired proper compaction. Research pointed out that a 1%
increase in air voids can lead to about a 10% loss of its service
life if using 7% as the target air voids, while 3% or fewer air
voids could be more likely to have thermal expansion and
unstable issues [2]. However, it is tricky to measure the air
Manuscript received 8 April 2022; revised 19 July 2022; accepted
13 October 2022. Date of publication 11 November 2022; date of cur-
rent version 26 January 2023. This work was supported in part by the
Center for Integrated Asset Management for Multi-Modal Transportation
Infrastructure Systems (CIAMTIS) University Transportation Center (UTC)
and in part by Ingevity Company. The Associate Editor for this article was
J. Sanchez-Medina. (Corresponding author: Shihui Shen.)
Shuai Yu is with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 USA (e-mail:
sqy5325@psu.edu).
Shihui Shen is with the Department of Engineering, The Pennsylvania State
University, Altoona, PA 16601 USA (e-mail: szs20@psu.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TITS.2022.3218692
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and Shihui Shen
voids or density of the asphalt pavement, especially during
compaction. Current approaches to determine the pavement’s
compaction are mainly based on the engineers’ experience
and density measurement devices (e.g., nuclear or non-nuclear
density gauge) at selected spots. The test sections need to be
constructed beforehand to establish the correlations between
the pavement density and the compaction patterns (passes,
speed, vibration amplitude, mode, etc.). The correlation can
hardly be adjusted once the compaction pattern is fixed; the
compaction quality of the entire pavement construction thus
cannot be guaranteed.
Intelligent Compaction (IC) technology was developed to
collect real-time compaction data to improve compaction
quality and uniformity. IC technology is a vibratory roller
equipped with a high-accurate Global Positioning System
(GPS), accelerometers, onboard computers, and infrared ther-
mometers for compacted material feedback control [3]. It
can monitor the real-time pavement condition to guide the
compaction and improve uniformity. However, the response
data collected by the IC system are from the entire structure
instead of the asphalt layer, which is mainly attributed to the
inconsistent correlations between the Intelligent Compaction
Measurement Value (ICMV) and the compactability of the
asphalt pavement [4]. The complicated interaction between
the viscoelastic material and the roller drums also hinders the
establishment of this correlation [4], [5].
In recent decades, many sensors and devices were applied
to assess pavement conditions. For example, the image
acquisition system was often used to collect the surface
damages and assist the decision-making for pavement
management [6]. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) can check
the inside pavement distress according to the propagation and
reflection of the electromagnetic wave [7]. The smartphone
could collect the external acceleration of the moving vehicle
on the detective pavement to assess the surface roughness
of the pavement [8]. These tools successfully evaluated the
conditions of the existing pavements by analyzing the related
image or kinematic data at the intermediate temperature. How-
ever, the high-temperature working condition still impeded
the application of many devices/sensors in the compaction
research. Comparably, the SmartRock, as a prototype wireless
Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) sensor, is found
to have a high survival rate in a high-temperature environment.
Wang et al. [9] first introduced the SmartRock in the laboratory
compaction and found that the internal particle behavior during
compaction presented a clear correlation with the density of
YU AND SHEN: COMPACTION PREDICTION FOR ASPHALT MIXTURES USING WIRELESS SENSOR
the asphalt mixture. The Superpave Gyratory Compaction
(SGC) process can be divided into three stages based on
the internal particle rotation. Further in-field compaction
studies revealed that the internal particle would respond
differently under various compaction modes and stages [10].
These findings affirmed that the internal particle kinematic
behavior during compaction should be carefully investigated
for compaction quality control and strategy optimization.
With advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and data
sensing technology, machine learning (ML) approaches are
getting popular in the industrial process, roadway net-
work maintenance, and prediction [11]. Souza et al. [12],
Nabipour et al. [13], and Marcelino et al. [14] developed
ML models to evaluate the pavement condition and pre-
dict its remaining service life. The reasonable predictions
confirmed that ML could be used as an optimization tool
in pavement management systems. Kwigizile et al. [15],
Amorim et al. [16], and Zhang et al. [17] combined AI and
data-sensing technologies and developed different algorithms
and neural networks to classify and monitor the types, loads,
and speeds of vehicles. The accurate evaluation offered reliable
inputs for the pavement structural design. Furthermore, hybrid
ML and biogeography-based programs (BBP) were developed
to predict the dynamic modulus of asphalt concrete. The
results specified that the ML model could predict an efficient
and accurate dynamic modulus, and their predictions even
outperformed the Witczak and Hirsch models for the same
materials [18], [19].
For multilayered asphalt pavements, the compaction inter-
action between the viscoelastic materials and roller drums
is complex and often confounded by many factors such
as climate, subgrade condition, and compactors’ variability.
Given the successful application of the machine learning
algorithm and sensing technology in pavement engineering,
this paper will integrate these technologies into asphalt mixture
compaction and aim to (1) identify critical predictor variables
for the compaction prediction of asphalt pavement; (2) develop
machine learning models to predict the compaction condition
of the laboratory asphalt mixture; (3) compare the prediction
quality of different machine learning algorithms and verify
their robustness for various prediction scenarios.
II. M ETHODOLOGY
A. SmartRock Sensor
Given the successful application of the SmartRock
(Figure 1) in asphalt research, this study chose it to capture
the real-time particle kinematic behavior during compaction.
SmartRock is a 27mm cube. The internal units consist of an
accelerometer, a gyroscope, a magnetometer, stress gauges,
and a thermometer to collect the real-time acceleration,
⎡   ⎤
1 − 2 q32 + q42
R = ⎣ 2 (q2q3 + q1q4)
2 (q2q4 − q1q3)
z  = Rz
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779
Fig. 1. SmartRock system (a) the appearance (b) inside sensors
(c) SmartRock receiver.
rotation, surface stress, and inside temperature. The 3D-
printed external shell can sustain temperatures as high as
150◦C, guaranteeing its workability in the high-temperature
compaction environment. The collected data can be simulta-
neously transmitted to the computer using wireless Bluetooth
Low Energy (BLE) technology. The small dimension and the
Bluetooth transmission technology reduced disturbances to the
compaction when it was embedded in an asphalt mixture
specimen. During application, each SmartRock sensor has its
coordinate system, called local coordinates. The SmartRock
data were initially collected on the local coordinate and then
transformed to the global coordinate for convenient analy-
sis and comparison. The coordinate transformation between
global and local coordinates can be achieved by equations (1)
and (2), shown at the bottom of the page, where, q1, q2, q3,
and q4 are the quaternion collected by the SmartRock. z and
z  are the data on global and local coordination, respectively.
B. Machine Learning Algorithms
A data-informed approach was applied in this research
to evaluate the interaction between the viscoelastic material
and compactor. The data-informed approach uses the analy-
sis of the collected data as a check on the experiences to
improve the success of decision-making [20]. It helps decide
whether or not the compaction efforts were enough for asphalt
mixtures by combining the engineers’ experiences and the
data analysis from machine learning (ML) technology. In this
laboratory compaction project, with the calculable compaction
condition as a reference, all algorithms (Figure 2) used in
this study are supervised ML models. They are the support
vector machine (SVM) classifier, logistic regression (LR), and
K-nearest neighbor (KNN).
1) Support Vector Machine (SVM): SVM is a supervised
ML model for two-group classification problems. Its purpose
is to find a plane that has the maximum margin (i.e., the
maximum distance between data points of both classes) from
the infinity of possible planes. If the original data can be
separated linearly, the SVM would create a decision boundary
(hyperplane) that can distinctly classify the N-dimensional
data points [21]. If not, the SVM would create a new variable
 −
2 (q2q3 q1q4) 2 (q2q4 + q1q3)
1 − 2 q2 + q42
2
 −
2 (q3q4 q1q2)⎦ (1)
2 (q3q4 + q1q2) 1 − 2 q2 + q32
2
(2)
780 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 1, JANUARY 2023

TABLE I
D ESIGN PARAMETERS FOR THE A SPHALT M IXTURES

Fig. 2. (a) Support vector machine (b) Logistic regression (c) K-nearest
neighbor.

using the kernel function to move the original data to a higher

dimension and do the nonlinear separation. The kernel function
used in the SVM could be linear, polynomial, radial, etc. The
data points closest to the hyperplane are the support vectors,
which significantly influence the position and orientation of the
hyperplane. The SVM classifier is notable for its effectiveness
in the high-dimensional data case, which is why it is selected
for the compaction prediction.
2) Logistic Regression (LR): LR models a relationship
between predictor variables and a categorical response vari-
able. It is an extension of the linear regression model for clas-
sification problems. LR gives the probability between 0 and 1
based on the sigmoid function as presented in equation (3)
[22]. To predict which class a data belongs to, a possibility
threshold would be set. LR is not only a classification model
but also gives probabilities for each prediction, which offers
more insights and information to decision-makers.
1
P (x) =  (3)
1 + e−( βi x+β0 )
3) K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN): KNN algorithm is a super-
vised machine learning algorithm used to solve classification
problems. It stores all available cases and classifies new cases
based on the selected features. Simply put, the known data
would be arranged in a space defined by the specific feature.
The algorithm will compare the classes of the K closest data
to determine which category the new data belongs to. The
KNN is simple yet efficient. Without any assumptions about
the underlying data distribution, it classifies data points based
Fig. 3. Gradation of the asphalt mixtures.
on their proximity and similarity to other available data points
[23]. However, the calculation speed would decrease rapidly
as the training data increases [24].
III. M ATERIALS AND E XPERIMENT
A. Materials
11 asphalt mixtures varying in mixture type, gradation, and
compaction temperatures were included in this study. Each
mixture had 3 replicate specimens (note: one mixture only has
two replicates since one specimen lost its sensing data during
compaction), and a total of 32 specimens were compacted. All
mixtures’ information and gradation curves are summarized in
Table I and Figure 3.
B. Compaction Experiment
The Superpave Gyratory Compactor (SGC) is one of the
most commonly used compactors in the laboratory. The Pine
G2 SGC is used to compact the asphalt mixture in this project.
During the compaction, the SGC compactor would monitor
the compaction loading, moment, and height of the specimen
at each gyration. The mixture’s compaction effort and shear
resistance could be determined accordingly. The SmartRock
was embedded at the center of the specimen to obtain stable
and most representative particle rotation results at a 17Hz

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YU AND SHEN: COMPACTION PREDICTION FOR ASPHALT MIXTURES USING WIRELESS SENSOR
Fig. 4. Illustration of the relative rotation [9].
Fig. 5. Comparison of the relative rotation curve and height curve.
Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of the SGC compaction.
sampling frequency [9]. To ensure the sensor is placed at the
center of the specimen, half of the mixtures were spread into
the mold. The SmartRock sensor was placed in the middle of
the mixtures and then the rest of the materials were added.
The procedure of using SmartRock (SR) in the compaction
test consists of the following steps:
1) Check the connectivity of the SmartRock with the com-
puter before compaction. Collect the initial data on a
horizontal platform for the coordinate transformation.
2) Short-term aged the loose mixtures for 2-hour at desired
compaction temperature.
3) Compact the mixtures and collect the particle kinematic
characteristics during the whole compaction process.
Meanwhile, the SGC compactor would collect the load-
ings, moment, and height of the compacted specimens.
4) Remove the SmartRock from the specimen after com-
paction and allow the sensor to cool down for the next
series of tests.
Two types of specimens were compacted for each asphalt
mixture:
1) Reference specimen: one specimen without the
SmartRock was compacted to measure the bulk specific
gravity (G mb ) of the specimen. The %Gmm of the
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781
TABLE II
P RE -M ODEL R ESULTS FOR I NPUT S ELECTION
specimen at each gyration can be determined by
equation (4).
2) Test specimen: three specimens with the SmartRock
sensor were compacted to investigate the particle kine-
matic behaviors during compaction. To guarantee the
same compaction condition as the reference specimen,
each specimen was deducted by 50g mass of mixture to
accommodate the SmartRock sensor.
h end G mb
%G mm @i t h = × (4)
hi G mm
where h end is the height of the specimen when compaction
ended. h i is the specimen height at i t h gyration. G mb is the
bulk specific gravity of the specimen when compaction ends.
G mm is the maximum specific gravity of the asphalt mixture.
IV. M ODEL D EVELOPMENT
A. Output Determination
The output of the prediction model is categorized into two
groups, “Compaction Done” and “Compaction Needed.” The
selection of the density threshold is based on the construction
Specification of the Pennsylvania Department of Transporta-
tion (PennDOT), which requires the density of all 9.5 mm,
12.5 mm, 19 mm, and 25 mm wearing or binder courses be
greater than 92%G mm [25]. For the convenience of practical
application, this paper also considers two predictive levels, (1)
classification with a fixed value of threshold; (2) classification
with a buffer zone. Details of these two predictive levels are
explained below.
(1) Classification with a fixed threshold value:
• Compaction Done: The %Gmm of the specimen is
higher than 92%.
• Compaction Needed: The mixture with the %Gmm
is less than 92%.
(2) Classification with a buffer zone:
• Compaction Done: The %Gmm of the asphalt mix-
ture specimen is higher than 92.5%.
• Buffer Zone: The %Gmm of the specimen is between
91.5% and 92.5%. It is acceptable to classify the
specimen in Buffer Zone to either compaction cat-
egory.
• Compaction Needed: The mixture with the %Gmm
is less than 91.5%.
782 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 1, JANUARY 2023

TABLE III
PARTIAL D ATA OF THE ML P REDICTION

B. Input Selection used to preprocess the data and remove the drifting for its
simplicity and good data processing quality.
1) Kinematic Variable: Compaction is a process of par-
The relative rotation curve, as shown in Figure 5, depicts the
ticulate material rearranging and consolidating in response
different stages of the compaction process. The particle rotates
to external mechanical forces (energy). The kinematic and
considerably under the compaction loads at the beginning
mechanical behaviors of the compacted material are change-
of the compaction. A dramatic decrease then occurs, which
able at different stages of compaction. Based on the findings
could be related to the enhanced particle contacts among
of previous works, the external responses from the entire
coarse aggregates and the gradual formation of a skeleton
pavement structure are hardly related to the compactability of
structure. The aggregates rearrange under continuous com-
the asphalt layer. Comparably, the internal particle responses
paction and eventually enter a stable status. At the end of the
were the only representative of the asphalt layer. By mon-
compaction, the relative rotation value stabilizes at an almost
itoring the particle rotation during compaction, the mixture
constant value, suggesting the particles are interlocked and can
particles were found to rotate at a consistent period in the
only rotate following the gyratory compactor. Also plotted in
SGC compactor [9]. The amplitude of the Euler angle curve
Figure 5 is the height curve of the same mixture during
attenuated as the compaction proceeded as shown in Figure 4.
compaction. The consistent trend between these two curves
The relative rotation was then defined as the difference
indicates that the relative rotation is highly related to the
between the peak and the valley value in a single cycle. Due
density and compactability of the asphalt mixture and could
to the high-temperature compaction environment, drifting can
be used in the compaction prediction.
sometimes occur during the data collection of the particle
rotation, which would considerably affect the quality of the 2) Mechanical Variable: The mineral aggregates consist of
quaternion and relative rotation. The detrending method was about 95% mass of the asphalt mixture, the compaction of

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YU AND SHEN: COMPACTION PREDICTION FOR ASPHALT MIXTURES USING WIRELESS SENSOR 783

the asphalt mixture is thus greatly influenced by the con- TABLE IV

tact and interlocking behaviors between aggregates [26]. The BACKWARD E LIMINATION BASED ON THE SVM P REDICTION
mechanical properties between particles were related to the
particle rotation and interlocking during compaction and the
mixture’s workability. Compaction densification index (CDI),
compaction force index (CFI), and normalized shear index
(NSI) are commonly used mechanical parameters to evaluate
the workability of asphalt mixtures [27]. Because the CDI
is calculated from the %Gmm, which was for determining
the compaction status in this study, CDI was unsuitable for
model inputs. CFI indicates how much resistive effort it
overcame to compact the mixtures from the initial cycle to
92% Gmm. The resistive effort W is defined in equation (5)
[27]. NSI represented the work applied by the compactor
to resist the frictional shearing stress during compaction. In
calculating the shear frictional resistance, it is reasonable to
assume the sample is fully constrained at any gyration, and TABLE V
the energy due to surface traction is negligible [27]. The NSI C OMPACTION P REDICTION C ONFIGURATION
can be calculated by equation (6). The CFI and NSI could
be the potential variables for the compaction prediction, and
the variable selection process was elaborated on in the next
section.
4e Pθ
W = (5)
Sh
M + P Shθ
τ = (6)
V
where, S is the section area of the specimen, V is the volume limited space of the paper, only partial data were displayed
of the specimen, θ is the tilting angle of the compactor, and is in Table III. The First 8 columns served as the inputs. The
the same as the shear strain γ , e is the eccentricity, P is the column “target” served as the output for the model, 0 here
compaction loading, and M is the moment during compaction represents the “Compaction Needed” and 1 represents “Com-
as shown in Figure 6. paction Done”. Among these 4154 data points, 896 data points
3) Variable Selection: A pre-modeling analysis was per- are categorized as target “0”, and the rest of the 3258 data
formed to select the most suitable input combination from the points are target “1”. The last column, “%Gmm ” calculated by
kinematic and mechanical variables for the compaction predic- equation (4), was not an input but was for determining the
tion. A total of 240 compaction data points from mixture No. 1 compaction status (i.e., the column “target”). To clarify, the
(in Table I) were used in the pre-modeling analysis. Since only column “type” represents the type of asphalt mixture. 0 was
one type of mixture was used, the mixture designs were not the HMA, and 1 was the WMA. “NMAS” is the nominal
necessarily included in the model. Table II summarizes the maximum aggregate size, and the “binder” refers to the high-
prediction errors and accuracy of 6 combinations using the temperature Performance Grade (PG) of the virgin binder. The
trial-and-error and forward selection methods. Model No. 6 column “NSI” is the accumulated normalized shear resistances
presents the highest prediction accuracy compared with others, from the beginning to the given gyration. The column “temp”
indicating that the NSI, relative rotation and temperature are means the internal sensor temperature at the moment of data
the most suitable input combination for compaction prediction. collection. It should be noted that the SmartRock temperature
measurement unit is in the center of the sensor and protected
C. Model Establishment by shell material. It has a lower temperature than the outside
Jointly considering the pre-modeling prediction results and mixture at the beginning of the compaction due to the delay
engineering experiences, the prediction variables were deter- in thermal conductivity. After several cycles, the SmartRock
mined for the compaction prediction model. They consist of sensor can properly record the temperature of the mixture.
four types of variables: Details of the temperature verification study can be found in
(1) particle kinematic variable, which is the relative rotation. the reference [9]. 10-fold cross-validation and three dataset
(2) mixture mechanical variable, which is the NSI. scenarios were conducted to establish the model and verify its
(3) compaction temperature collected by SmartRock. robustness. These three dataset scenarios are:
(4) mixture design information, which includes the mixture (1) Scenario I: All compaction data points serve as the
type, gradation, binder, etc. training dataset to establish the model and check the
In ML modeling, 11 asphalt mixtures, a total of 32 spec- prediction accuracy.
imens with 4154 compaction points, were used to establish (2) Scenario II: 70% of random compaction data points
the prediction model. It is worth noting that because of the serve as the training dataset to establish the model, and

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784 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 1, JANUARY 2023
TABLE VI
C OMPACTION P REDICTION OF A SPHALT M IXTURE U SING T HREE A LGORITHMS
the rest of the 30% of data points serve as the test dataset
to examine the prediction quality.
(3) Scenario III: 8 mixture compaction data points serve as
the training dataset, and the rest of the 3 mixtures’ data
points serve as the test dataset to verify the quality of
the model.
V. R ESULTS AND A NALYSIS
A. Critical Variable Identification
Backward elimination was performed to identify the signif-
icance of each predictor variable and construct the desirable
prediction model. This procedure was performed for all three
ML algorithms, including SVM, LR, and KNN, and the same
significant variables were identified. Considering the length of
the paper, only the SVM classifier results of the scenarios I
was presented here.
After trials and errors, the linear kernel function was
selected for the SVM model, and the results are presented
in Table IV. The original input of the model based on the
SVM algorithm includes 8 variables: mixture type, additive
dosage, NMAS, binder type, lateral relative rotation, tem-
perature, and NSI. The prediction accuracy of the original
formula is 98.82%. The first column of accuracy in Table
IV specifies the prediction results when a single parameter
is removed from the original formula. It is clear that the least
accurate prediction occurred when the NSI (normalized shear
index) was removed from the input, indicating that the shear
resistance is the most critical variable for the compaction pre-
diction. This finding is consistent with many literature findings
regarding the effects of shearing stress on the compaction
of asphalt pavement [27], [28]. The second column shows
the prediction quality without the NSI and another variable
(shown in the corresponding row). The results indicate the
significance of the temperature for the compaction predic-
tion. The same elimination approach continued and confirmed
the effect of the internal particle rotation on estimating the
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compaction condition. Conclusively, the NSI, temperature, and
particle rotation functioned as the most critical variables for
the compaction prediction of the asphalt mixture.
B. Model Quality Evaluation
To evaluate the prediction quality of the three ML algo-
rithms under different dataset scenarios, and also considering
the imbalanced property of the compaction dataset, three
metrics, sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy, were jointly used
to assess the prediction quality. The calculation is shown in
equations (7)-(9). The corresponding four parameters (i.e., true
positive, false positive, false negative, and true negative) used
to determine these metrics are specified in Table V. Generally,
sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy can inspect whether or not
the model can correctly predict the target “0”, target “1”, and
the overall dataset.
Sensi ti vi t y = T P/(T P + F N) (7)
Speci f i ci t y = T N/(T N + F P) (8)
Accur acy = (T P + T N)/(T P + F P + T N + F N) (9)
In the model establishment, the linear kernel function was
selected for the SVM model after trials and errors. K = 5 was
eventually determined for the KNN algorithm by the cross-
validation method to achieve the most accurate prediction
quality. The prediction results of three ML models under three
different dataset scenarios are shown in Table VI.
It is worth noticing that all the prediction results using
various ML models are higher than 95%. The prediction errors
were considerably reduced for scenarios II and III because the
size of the test dataset of these two scenarios is only about
1/3 of the size of Scenario I. However, the test dataset of
scenarios II and III is different from their training dataset.
The high prediction accuracy for these two scenarios verified
the high robustness of the ML algorithm for the compaction
prediction. In addition, the KNN model presented more errors
than the other two models for scenario III whether or not the
YU AND SHEN: COMPACTION PREDICTION FOR ASPHALT MIXTURES USING WIRELESS SENSOR
buffer zone was set. The test dataset for scenario III used dif-
ferent mixtures from the training mixtures. The slightly higher
error rate of the KNN algorithm indicated its weakness in
controlling the out-of-sample errors. Compared with the KNN
algorithm, the prediction of the SVM and LR classifiers are
similar and stable for all three dataset scenarios. The prediction
accuracy considerably improved when the buffer zone was
set. This phenomenon shows that most errors occurred near
the threshold, which is acceptable for the field compaction
project. The prediction quality of the SVM and LR models
were all higher than 97% and even reached 100% when the
buffer zone was set. These results confirmed that the SVM and
LR algorithms are appropriate and promising for predicting the
compaction condition of the laboratory asphalt mixtures.
However, the mixtures and data points used in the study
are limited, and more asphalt mixtures are needed in the
future to verify the conclusions. Considering the inherent
characteristics of these two algorithms, the SVM algorithm
is more powerful for processing high-dimensional data, which
is essential for predicting complicated asphalt mixture com-
paction. The LR could predict the probability of the occurrence
of the “Compaction Done”, which would offer more insight
into the compaction quality control and strategy optimization.
The selection of either model needs to consider the inherent
characters and demands of the prediction situation.
VI. C ONCLUSION
This paper identified the critical predictor variables for the
asphalt mixture compaction and established machine learning
models to predict the compaction condition of the laboratory
asphalt mixture. The conclusions are listed as follows:
(1) Mixture shearing resistance (NSI), temperature, and
internal particle rotation are the most critical variables
for the compaction prediction of asphalt mixtures. The
machine learning model can predict the compaction
condition with high accuracy when these parameters and
mixture design information are used as inputs.
(2) The KNN algorithm is inappropriate for com-
paction prediction due to its incapability to control
out-of-sample errors.
(3) SVM and LR are promising and appropriate ML algo-
rithms to predict the compaction condition for its higher
prediction accuracy based on the 11 mixtures. The selec-
tion for either model needs to consider their inherent
characters and demands of the prediction situation.
(4) The models in the paper are still preliminary based on
limited laboratory data. More data and mixture vari-
ables should be considered in future studies for model
improvement and validation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the Railroad Technology
and Services, LLC, for the SmartRock sensors and their
technical support. They appreciate the New Enterprise Stone
and Lime Company Inc., HRI Inc., and Brooks Construction
Company Inc., providing materials. A Special thanks go to
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785
Richard Steger from Ingevity, Mark Moyer from New Enter-
prise Stone and Lime Company, and Jeff Austin from Brooks
Construction Company Inc., for their assistance and support.
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