Conbuildmat D 23 07879 r1 Reviewer

Construction and Building Materials
Interlayer bonding quality evaluation of sleeper-asphalt block composite structure

applied to asphalt elastic cured track bed
--Manuscript Draft--
Manuscript Number: CONBUILDMAT-D-23-07879R1
Article Type: Research Paper
Keywords: Asphalt elastic cured track bed, Epoxy asphalt mortar (EAM), interfacial bonding
evaluation, cohesive contact, lifting analysis, interfacial damage analysis
Abstract: To improve the bonding quality between sleeper and asphalt block used in asphalt
elastic cured track bed, a novel epoxy asphalt mortar (EAM) was designed in this
study. The optimal dosage of EAM was determined as 17 kg·m-2 through laboratory
tests. Besides, to understand the bonding quality in depth, bonding performance of two
kinds of sleeper-asphalt block composite structure under different conditions were
investigated through interfacial shear test and pull-out test, and the results show that
the bonding quality between sleeper and epoxy asphalt mixture using designed EAM is
better than that between sleeper and styrene–butadiene-styrene/crumb rubber
(SBS/CR) composite modified asphalt mixture. Meanwhile, bonding qualities decrease
in an exponential trend with the increase of temperature. Besides, a FE model using
cohesive contact approach at interface was established and validated to evaluate the
bonding performance during long-term service and lifting process. The differences
among static lifting parameters and dynamic lifting parameters were evaluated and the
optimal lifting speed was selected as 0.9 m/s. The results also show that the sleeper-
epoxy asphalt mixture composite structure has better bonding performance at most
conditions and this structure was selected as the ideal structure for construction.
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1 1 Interlayer bonding quality evaluation of sleeper-

2
3
4 2 asphalt block composite structure applied to asphalt
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6
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3 elastic cured track bed
8 4 You Wua,b, Yanbing Zhoua, Chenguang Shia, Yunhong Yua, Yulou Fana, Xing Caic, Yixin Zhoua,
9
10 5 Houzhi Wanga,, Minghui Gongd, Jinxiang Hongd, Jun Yanga,b,, Wei Huanga
11 6
12 7 a School of Transportation, Southeast University, #2 Southeast University Road, Nanjing 211189, PR China
13
8 b National Demonstration Center for Experimental Road and Traffic Engineering Education (Southeast University),
14
15 9 Southeast University, #2 Southeast University Road, Nanjing 211189, PR China
16 c
17 10 The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
d
18 11 Jiangsu Sobute New Materials Co. Ltd., Nanjing, PR China
19 12
20
21 13 Abstract: To improve the bonding quality between the sleeper and asphalt block used in the asphalt
22 14 elastic cured track bed, a novel epoxy asphalt mortar (EAM) was designed in this study. The optimal
23
15 dosage of EAM was determined as 17 kg·m-2 through laboratory tests. Besides, to understand the
24
25 16 bonding quality in depth, the bonding performance of two kinds of sleeper-asphalt block composite
26 17 structures under different conditions were investigated through interfacial shear test and pull-out
27
28 18 test, and the results show that the bonding quality between sleeper and epoxy asphalt mixture using
29 19 designed EAM is better than that between sleeper and styrene–butadiene–styrene/crumb rubber
30 20 (SBS/CR) composite modified asphalt mixture. Meanwhile, bonding qualities decrease in an
31
32 21 exponential trend with the increase in temperature. Besides, an FE model using a cohesive contact
33 22 approach at the interface was established and validated to evaluate the bonding performance during
34
23 the long-term service and lifting process. The differences among static lifting parameters and
35
36 24 dynamic lifting parameters were evaluated and the optimal lifting speed was selected as 0.9 m/s.
37 25 The results also show that the sleeper-epoxy asphalt mixture composite structure has better bonding
38
39 26 performance at most conditions and this structure was selected as the ideal structure for construction.
40 27 Keywords: Asphalt elastic cured track bed, Epoxy asphalt mortar (EAM), interfacial bonding
41 28 evaluation, cohesive contact, lifting analysis, interfacial damage analysis
42
43
44
29 1 Introduction
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30 High-speed railway is welcomed worldwide for its high efficiency, high safety, high comfort level,
46
47 31 and low transport costs [1]. With the development in passenger traffic and widespread application
48 32 scenarios, the inherent disadvantages of traditional ballasted track and ballastless track have been
49
50 33 magnified, such as fly ballast for ballasted track and hard to maintain for ballastless track [2, 3]. To
51 34 solve these problems, the concept of an elastic cured track bed has been proposed, which is seen as
52 35 a reasonable solution to track structures in the future for its excellent performance in reducing
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54 36 vibration and future maintenance [4-6]. Researchers have proved that emulsified asphalt [4] and
55 37 polyurethane [7] possess the potential to construct elastic cured track beds, however, there are
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38 intrinsic disadvantages, poor long-term performance for emulsified asphalt track [4] and high
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58
59
60  Corresponding author. Jun Yang: yangjun@seu.edu.cn, Houzhi Wang: houzhi_wang@seu.edu.cn
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1 construction costs for polyurethane track, limited their promotional use. Similarly, some researchers
1 2 suggested that epoxy asphalt track has better working performance compared with polyurethane
2
3 3 track and have the potential to overcome the disadvantages mentioned above due to the excellent
4 4 laboratory properties of epoxy asphalt mixtures [1, 6, 8-10].
5
6
5 To protect the track substructure and effectively disperse the train load, sleeper is a necessary
7 6 component of the track structure. In addition, the degree of bonding between the sleeper and the
8 7 substructure plays a significant role in how well the sleeper fulfills its role. Traditionally, sleepers
9
10 8 are embedded in the gravel ballast or bonded with concrete slabs using concrete asphalt, respectively
11 9 for ballasted and ballastless tracks. However, for epoxy asphalt track, the track material is
12 10 prefabricated in the factory into prefabricated blocks with grooves, and the Portland cement concrete
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14 11 (PCC) sleeper is installed into the groove, thus a basic unit of the elastic cured track bed is formed
15 12 [6, 11], as shown in Fig. 1. The left side of these two schematics are the actual units, and the right
16
17 13 side shows the structure schematic. After assembling these prefabricated blocks in the factory, they
18 14 will be transformed into construction sites and installed on-site. During this process, lifting of these
19 15 prefabricated units is unavoidable, as shown in Fig. 1(a), meaning that the bonding quality between
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21 16 the PCC sleeper and blocks needs to be verified under more conditions and is not limited to the
22 17 completion of the whole track structure.
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33 (a)
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44 (b)
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18 Figure 1 Basic unit of (a) epoxy asphalt track, (b) polyurethane track
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47 19 Typically, in conventional ballastless structures, bonding between PCC sleeper and track slab is
48 20 simplified to bonding between two parts of Portland cement concrete (PCC) [12] and under this
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50 21 condition, cement asphalt mortar (CAM) is always used as a bonding agent [13, 14]. In response to
51 22 this bonding situation, researchers have pointed out that emulsified asphalt can reduce elastic
52 23 modulus and make a contribution to improve the viscoelasticity of CAM, which are beneficial for
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54 24 both reducing the overall track stiffness and improving the synergistic deformation of the whole
55 25 track structure [15, 16]. Moreover, for the problem of emulsified asphalt is easy to debond when
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26 applied to track structure, stabilizer, and expansive agent are introduced to improve the interfacial
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58 27 bonding behavior between PCC slabs [12, 14]. Similarly, to improve the bonding strength, some
59 28 modifiers, for example, polymer latex, are applied to CAM, and proper A/C (asphalt to cement ratio
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1 in mass) is determined by both laboratory and field tests [17]. In addition, with the development of
1 2 high-speed railways, various new forms of track structures began to appear and there is also a
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3 3 bonding problem between the new structural components. For example, Chen investigated the
4 4 interface damage between PCC slabs and asphalt concrete waterproofing layer (ACWL) through
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5 field tests and numerical calculations [13].
7 6 However, different from the bonding forms mentioned above, bonding between PCC sleeper and
8 7 epoxy asphalt block is a new form in railway engineering and was little studied before. Such bonding
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10 8 form is more likely to bond between PCC slabs and ACWL, however, the strength of the epoxy
11 9 asphalt mixture is much higher than the asphalt mixture applied to ACWL [8, 18-20], meaning that
12 10 the bonding material between PCC sleeper and epoxy asphalt block need to be redesigned and the
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14 11 bonding behavior need to be further investigated. To meet the requirements of lateral resistance, of
15 12 which the track bed contributes 65%[21], the shear strength between the PCC sleeper and asphalt
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17 13 block is highly required [9]. There have been a series of attempts aiming to find high bonding
18 14 strength materials in pavement engineering and bridge decks [22-24], among which the EAM is
19 15 seen as an excellent bonding material for its outstanding shear resistance and moisture resistance
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21 16 [24]. However, some researchers also pointed out that when it comes to higher temperatures (60 °C),
22 17 the bonding strength between the PCC sleeper and asphalt block decreases by about 50%, indicating
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18 that it can’t meet the usage requirements at high temperatures [22]. Considering the different
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25 19 working conditions of the elastic asphalt track bed, the bonding material needs to be specially
26 20 selected and designed. Moreover, it is crucial to evaluate the working performance of sleeper-asphalt
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28 21 composite structure for a selected material.
29 22 To select the proper material for bonding between the PCC sleeper and epoxy asphalt mixture
30 23 used in the epoxy asphalt elastic track bed, this study first designed EAM for the structure novel
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32 24 EAM. Then a series of PCC and asphalt mixture composite specimens using selected bonding
33 25 material were molded in the laboratory and corresponding laboratory tests were conducted to
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26 evaluate the bonding ability of selected bonding material. Next, a finite element (FE) model was
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36 27 established to evaluate the mechanical behavior of composite structures during the static and
37 28 dynamic lifting process of construction. Finally, a summary and conclusions were detailed in the
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39 29 last section.
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41 30 2 Materials and methods
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43 31 To meet the requirements of high bonding strength between the sleeper and asphalt block, a novel
44 32 EAM was specially designed. Additionally, to validate the reasonability of the designed EAM, two
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33 kinds of PCC (representing sleeper) and asphalt mixture (representing asphalt block) composite
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47 34 specimens were molded in this sectionto validate the reasonability of designed EAM. Besides, the
48 35 way of conducting interfacial shear tests was also introduced in this section.
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50 36 2.1 Raw materials
51 37 The acid aggregates, such as granite and sandstone, were preferred in railway track construction,
52 38 especially in ballast construction [25], however, there are difficulties in meeting the requirements
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54 39 of bonding strength between aggregates and asphalt binders when using acid aggregates. To
55 40 maximize the bonding ability of the designed EAM, high-quality limestone, which is widely used
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41 in pavement engineering, was selected as the aggregate. The fine aggregates and fillers used in this
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58 42 section are high-quality limestone produced from Maanshan City, Anhui Province, China, which
59 43 meets the requirements in specification JTG E42-2005 [26]. The critical physical property
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1 parameters of fine aggregates and filler are detailed in Table 1.
1 2 Table 1 Physical properties of fine aggregates and filler
2
3 Item Technique index Test result Requirements
4 Fine aggregates Density /(g·cm ) -3 2.688 ≥2.50
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6 Robustness (Aggregate size > 0.3mm) / % 3.1 ≤12
7 Sand equivalency /% 75 ≥60
8 Filler Density /(g·cm-3) 2.768 ≥2.50
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10 Plasticity index /% 3 <4
11 3 The epoxy asphalt (EA) used in this study consists of three components, those are, epoxy resin
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4 (component A), curing agent (component B), and SBS-modified asphalt binder. In this study, the
14 5 ratio of component A, component B, and SBS-modified asphalt binder was 2:2:6 in weight. The
15 6 SBS asphalt binder was produced by Jiangsu Zhonghong Environment Protection Technology Co.,
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17 7 Ltd. (Jiangyin, China) and the SBS polymer content was 4% in weight. As epoxy resin has been
18 8 widely and maturely used in bridge decking and pavement engineering, the basic properties of epoxy
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9 resin were tested following the specification JTG/T 3364-02-2019 [27] and GB/T 30598-2014 [28].
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21 10 Some critical parameters of epoxy resin and curing agent are listed in Table 2. Besides, the basic
22 11 properties of SBS-modified asphalt binder were tested through JTG E20-2011 [29] and some critical
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24 12 parameters were detailed in Table 3.
25 13 Table 2 Physical properties of epoxy resin, curing agent
26 Item Technical index Test result
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28 Epoxy resin Density /(g·cm-3) 1.167
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30 Viscosity (25 °C) /Pa·s 14.75
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32 Curing agent Density /(g·cm-3) 0.851
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34 Viscosity (25 °C) /Pa·s 41
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36 14
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15 Table 3 Physical properties of SBS-modified asphalt binder
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39 Technique index Test result Requirements
40 Penetration (25 °C, 100 g, 5 s) /0.1 mm 56 40~60
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42 Ductility (5 °C, 5 cm·min-1) /cm 42 ≥20
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44
Softening point /°C 78 ≥60
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46
Dynamic viscosity (60 °C) / Pa·s 1.8 ≤3
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49 16 The hot mix technique was applied in this study. The SBS-modified asphalt binder was first
50 17 heated to 190 °C for 2 hours and the aggregates were heated to 200 °C for 4 hours before mixing.
51 18 The mixing temperature was maintained at 200 °C during mixing. Before the aggregates were added
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53 19 into the mixer, the epoxy components and SBS-modified asphalt binder needed to be stirred
54 20 manually in the mixer for a while to ensure that they were well mixed. Then the fine aggregates and
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21 filler were added into the mixer separately, among which the fine aggregates were added into the
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57 22 mixer in front and mixed for 60 s, and then the filler was added into the mixer for another 60 s
58 23 mixing.
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1 2.2 Methods
1
2 2 2.2.1 Gradation design
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3 Currently, there is a lack of uniform standards for the maximum aggregate size of fine aggregate
4
5 4 used in asphalt mortar. The scenarios of using aggregates with aggregate sizes of 9.5, 4.75, 2.36,
6 5 and 1.18 mm as the maximum aggregate size in asphalt mortar have been presented in previous
7
8 6 studies [30-33]. Given that the EAM designed in this study should have enough fluidity to cover the
9 7 spaces between the sleeper and asphalt block, the maximum aggregate size in the EAM gradation
10 8 shouldn't be too huge. Meanwhile, the designed EAM should possess enough strength to avoid
11
12 9 unwanted cracking [33], thus the maximum aggregate needs to be larger than a typical level. Based
13 10 on the requirements of two aspects of performance mentioned above, 2.36 mm was chosen as the
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11 maximum aggregate size in this study. The gradation of fine aggregates is detailed in Table 4.
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16 12 Table 4 Gradation of fine aggregate without filler
17 Sieve size /mm 2.36 1.18 0.6 0.3 0.15 <0.075
18
19 Proportion /% 34.2 16.5 15.8 7.6 10.0 15.9
20 13 After the basic gradation of fine aggregate was selected, it is crucial to determine the content of
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14 filler, which is of great importance in achieving tight bonding between aggregate particles and high
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23 15 bonding strength between sleeper and asphalt block. Then the optimal asphalt content was
24 16 determined using Eq. (1):
25
26 17 𝑃𝑏 = 𝑇𝐹 × 𝑆𝐴 (1)
27 18 where TF represents the thickness of asphalt film and was assumed as 9.5 µm in this study [34].
28 19 SA represents the specific surface area of aggregates and can be determined using Eq. (2):
29
30 20 𝑆𝐴 = 10 × (0.41 + 0.0082𝑃2.36 + 0.0164𝑃1.18 + 0.0287𝑃0.6 + 0.06 + 0.1229𝑃0.15 + 0.3277𝑃0.0075 ) (2)
31
32 21 where 𝑃𝑖 represents the passing ratio of aggregate with a typical size.
33 22 To compare the performance difference of EAM with different contents of filler, laboratory
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23 performances of four kinds of EAM with filler contents of 8%, 9%, 10%, and 11%, respectively
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36 24 were compared. The optimal asphalt content of the four kinds of EAM were 20.4%, 21.0%, 21.6%,
37 25 and 22.2%, respectively, calculated from Eq. (1) and (2). According to the requirements of bonding
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26 between sleeper and asphalt block, the strength, especially flexural strength (𝑅𝑓 ), compression
40 27 strength (𝑅𝑐 ), and fluidity are the most important properties, thus beam bending test and Lueer
41 28 fluidity test [35] were conducted to evaluate these properties respectively, as shown in Fig. 2.
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41 1 Figure 2 Properties of EAM with different filler content (a) flexural and compression
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43 2 properties, (b) fluidity
44 3 It can be seen that with the increase of filler content, both the compression strength and flexural
45 4 strength show a trend of increase, however, the flexural compression ratio 𝑅𝑐 /𝑅𝑓 and fluidity
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47 5 shows a trend of first increase then decrease. To make the designed EAM possess enough strength
48 6 as well as sufficient toughness to transform train load to substructures, the 𝑅𝑐 /𝑅𝑓 should be large
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50 7 enough [36, 37]. Meanwhile, considering that excessive fluidity may lead to segregation and ensure
51 8 workability at the same time, the fluidity was restricted to 3~20 s according to the specifications in
52 9 China and Japan [35, 38, 39]. Considering the above two aspects of performance, the final content
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54 10 of filler was determined to be 10% in this study.
55 11 The final gradation of EAM was transformed from the gradation of the original epoxy asphalt
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12 mixture used and designed for the asphalt block [8], as depicted in Table 5. When determining the
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58 13 final gradation of EAM, the filler added to the fine aggregate part without filler of the original
59 14 gradation was first, and then the resulting mixture was distributed according to Table 4 and filler
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1 content of 10%. The final gradation of EAM was depicted in Table 5 and the final optimal asphalt
1 2 content was determined to be 21.6% through previous calculations.
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3 3 Table 5 Gradation of epoxy asphalt mixture and EAM
4 Sieve size /mm 26.5 19.0 16.0 13.2 9.5 4.75 <2.36
5
6 Epoxy asphalt mixture 13.4 9.6 8.9 9.7 12.9 18.5 27
7 Sieve size /mm 2.36 1.18 0.6 0.3 0.15 <0.075 Filler
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EAM 30.8 14.8 14.2 6.8 9.0 14.3 10.0
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10 4 2.2.2 Sample preparation
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12 5 Generally, the asphalt block used in asphalt elastic cured track bed can be divided into two types,
13 6 that is, asphalt block using epoxy asphalt and asphalt block using SBS/CR composite modified
14
15 7 asphalt, whose designed method and gradation were introduced in previous studies [8, 33]. To meet
16 8 the requirements of lateral resistance of track structure, among which the track bed offers more than
17
9 65% [21], the bonding strength between the sleeper and asphalt block was investigated using an
18
19 10 interfacial shear test and pull-out test. In this study, two kinds of PCC-asphalt mixture composite
20 11 specimens were prepared. Firstly, a PCC slab with a thickness of 5 cm was molded. Then an asphalt
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22 12 mixture rutting plate with a thickness of 5 cm was prepared. Finally, the PCC slabs and rutting plate
23 13 slabs were bonded using designed EAM and cut into specimens with a size of 5 cm × 5 cm × 7 cm.
24 14 The schematic of two kinds of composite specimens and prepared specimens were shown in Fig. 3.
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26 15 Besides, it should be noted that for the brevity of description, PCC slabs with SBS/CR composite
27 16 modified asphalt mixture were called Type I, while PCC slabs with epoxy asphalt mixture were
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17 called Type II in lateral sections.
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42 (a) (b)
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44 18 Figure 3 (a) Schematic of PCC-asphalt mixture composite specimens (b) specimens
45 19 2.2.3 Laboratory tests
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47 20 To investigate the bonding properties of a composite structure in depth, an interfacial shear test
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21 and pull-out test were conducted to obtain the shear strength and bonding strength, respectively[40].
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50 22 However, before investigating the bonding properties in detail, it is crucial to determine the dosage
51 23 of EAM due to insufficient dosage may cause insufficient bonding quality, while excessive dosage
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53 24 results in a weak interlayer between sleeper and asphalt block. To determine the optimal dosage of
54 25 EAM, five dosages were investigated through laboratory tests under the temperature 25 °C, namely
55 26 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 kg·m-2, based on previous research [9, 33]. Shear strength, bonding strength,
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57 27 and fracture energy at normal conditions, water immersion conditions, and freeze-thaw conditions
58 28 were investigated separately to determine the optimal dosage of EAM. Since the temperature is the
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29 main factor influencing the bonding properties, 5 temperature conditions were investigated after the
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1 optimal dosage of EAM was determined, namely -5, 10, 25, 40, and 55 °C. It is noted that all the
1 2 specimens were kept for 4 h for a typical testing temperature while investigating the influence of
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3 3 working temperature. Besides, the effects of water immersion and freeze-thaw cycles on the above
4 4 properties were also investigated in this study. During the water immersion test, each specimen was
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6
5 immersed in water at a temperature of 60 °C for 48 h to simulate the working conditions in hot and
7 6 humid areas. In freeze-thaw cycling, each specimen was first kept in a refrigerator with a
8 7 temperature of -18 °C for 16 h, then the specimen was immersed in water at a temperature of 60 °C
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10 8 for 24 h. After the freeze-thaw cycle, the specimen was kept for 2 h with a temperature of 25 °C,
11 9 and then an interfacial shear test and pull-out test were conducted. Moreover, it is noted that three
12 10 replicate specimens were tested in each test condition, and the average value was chosen as the final
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14 11 value to avoid accidental errors.
15 12 The universal testing machine (UTM, UTM-25, IPC Global, CONTROLS, Milan, Italy) was used
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17 13 to conduct the interfacial shear test. For each testing temperature, each specimen was kept for 4
18 14 hours in the environment box of UTM before testing. The loading rate is 5 mm/min, and the shear
19 15 strength can be calculated using Eq. (3):
20
21 𝐹𝑠
16 𝑃𝑠 = × 𝑠𝑖𝑛30° (3)
22 𝐴
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17 where 𝑃𝑠 represents the shear strength and 𝐹𝑠 represents the peak value of shear force. A
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25 18 represents the contact area at the interface and in this study, the value is 2500 mm2. Besides, the
26 19 shear stiffness of the interface can be determined using Eq. (4):
27
𝑡0
28 20 𝐾 = × 103 (4)
29 𝛿0
30 21 where K represents the shear or bonding stiffness, 𝑡0 represents the maximum stress during
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32 22 loading and 𝛿0 represents the efficient displacement.
33 23 During the pull-out test, a multi-functional pulling and pressing tester was applied in this study
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24 and the loading value was set to 10 mm/min, thus the bonding strength can be obtained by Eq. (5):
35
36 𝐹𝑏
25 𝑃𝑏 = (5)
37 𝐴
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39 26 where 𝑃𝑏 represents the bonding strength and 𝐹𝑏 is the peak value during the pull-out test.
40 27 Moreover, based on the load-displacement curve of the interfacial shear test and pull-out test, the
41 28 fracture energy of the shear test and pull-out test can be obtained, which is similar to the fracture
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43 29 energy of the semi-circular bending (SCB) test. The detailed analysis methods were introduced
44 30 elsewhere [10] and only calculation results of fracture energy were detailed in this study.
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46 31 3 Evaluation of bonding properties
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48 32 3.1 Determination of EAM dosage
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50 33 Generally, the bonding qualities of bituminous materials under normal conditions (25 °C, without
51 34 water immersion or freeze-that cycling) are much better than after water immersion or freeze-thaw
52 35 cycling. In this section, bonding strength, bonding stiffness, and fracture energy with different EAM
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54 36 dosages were discussed respectively, as shown in Fig. 4, and the optimal EAM dosage was
55 37 determined through these three parameters. It can be seen from the figure that with the increase of
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38 EAM dosage, all these three parameters show a trend of first increase then decrease and reach the
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58 39 peak when the EAM dosage is 17 kg·m-2, thus the final dosage of EAM was determined as 17 kg·m-
59 40 2 to achieve good bonding qualities. Such results are due to the change of bonding conditions
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1 between the sleeper and asphalt block. When the dosage of EAM is relatively small, the contact
1 2 surface of the composite specimen can’t be in complete contact with the EAM, and thus can’t
2
3 3 provide enough bonding strength and bonding stiffness. Meanwhile, under these conditions, there
4 4 are many microcracks and unconnected areas between the sleeper and asphalt block, resulting in
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6
5 earlier cracking at the interface, thus the fracture energies are relatively low. With the increase of
7 6 EAM dosage, these unconnected regions are filled with extra EAM and the bonding quality between
8 7 sleeper and asphalt block thus increases. However, with the continued increase of EAM dosage, the
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10 8 thickness of the bonding layer between the sleeper and asphalt block also increases, thus a weak
11 9 sandwich layer occurs in this region. When the thickness of the weak layer is too large, unwanted
12 10 damage will occur in this region, thus causing a decrease in these three parameters.
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14 11 Additionally, it also can be concluded from the figure that, the shear strength and bonding strength
15 12 of Type II is larger than Type I. The same rule exists in the difference between shear fracture energy
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17 13 and bonding fracture energy, as well as the shear stiffness, of Type II and Type I, indicating that the
18 14 bonding qualities between EAM and SBS/CR composite modified asphalt mixture are much lower
19 15 than that between EAM and epoxy asphalt mixture. This is mainly due to the strength differences
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21 16 between substructures, those are differences between SBS/CR composite modified asphalt block
22 17 and epoxy asphalt block. In the composition of SBS/CR composite modified asphalt block, due to
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18 the presence of dry-process crumb rubber, the overall adhesion decreases [8, 9], resulting in a
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25 19 significant gap of bonding qualities between Type I and Type II. That is to say, the bonding
26 20 parameters of Type I are the strength parameters of the SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture
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28 21 rather than EAM. However, this results further depicts that the designed EAM has a strong bonding
29 22 ability and is reasonable for bonding PCC sleeper and asphalt blocks.
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32 1 Figure 4 Effect of EAM dosage on (a) Strength, (b) Stiffness, and (c) Fracture energy (Normal
33 2 condition)
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3 3.2 Water effect
36 4 Based on Fig. 1(a) and Ref. [1], the sleeper was embedded into the preset groove of the asphalt
37 5 block, meaning that the water and other unwanted contaminants will accumulate in the locations of
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39 6 microdamage of the groove. Under the influence of water, the bonding qualities decrease apparently
40 7 during long-term working. Similarly, under the influence of climate change, the bonding qualities
41 8 also decrease due to the deterioration of the bonding interface. This section investigated the
42
43 9 deterioration of bonding qualities using specimens after water immersion and freeze-thaw cycling,
44 10 as shown in Fig. 5. To describe the deterioration quantitatively, the residual intensity ratio of
45
11 different parameters can be determined using Eq. (6):
46
47 𝜎
12 𝑇 = ( ) × 100% (6)
48 𝜎0
49
50 13 where T represents the residual intensity ratio, 𝜎 represents the parameter after water immersion
51 14 or freeze-thaw cycling and 𝜎0 represents the parameter after water immersion or freeze-thaw
52 15 cycling.
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54 16 It can be concluded that the bonding quality of Type II is better than that of Type I under any test
55 17 conditions, indicating that Type II has better long-term working performance than Type I. This also
56
18 can be attributed to the presence of dry-process crumb rubber and the adhesion at the interface is
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58 19 relatively worse. Additionally, under the long-term effect of water and temperature, the adhesion
59 20 between crumb rubber and asphalt mixture will deteriorate faster than that between epoxy resin and
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1 asphalt mixture under the influence of water and climate change. In terms of the magnitude of
1 2 change in these parameters, the strength residual intensity ratios of type I are 87.5% and 75.8%,
2
3 3 respectively, after water immersion and freeze-thaw cycling. However, these values are 90.2% and
4 4 77.4%, respectively for Type II. This further illustrates that the adhesion quality of Type II is better
5
6
5 than that of Type I and the bonding performance of Type II deteriorates slower than that of Type I
7 6 during long-term service due to the better adhesion between epoxy resin and asphalt mixture.
8 7 Moreover, it also can be concluded that the residual intensity ratio after water immersion is larger
9
10 8 than that after freeze-thaw cycling, indicating that during long-term service the water has a worse
11 9 influence on the bonding behavior of composite structure. This is because during the process of
12 10 long-term service, bonding quality deterioration caused by the intrusion of water is much more
13
14 11 severe than that caused by climate change. This is because the intrusion of water causes the bond
15 12 between the aggregate and the asphalt to be greatly reduced, whereas the temperature change only
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17 13 weakens the material and does not change much in terms of bonding properties.
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17 (c)
18 1 Figure 5 Effect of water on (a) Strength, (b) Stiffness, and (c) Fracture energy (17 kg·m-2)
19 2 3.3 Temperature effect
20
21 3 Considering that the designed EAM and components of asphalt block, those are, epoxy asphalt
22 4 mixture and SBS/CR composite modified asphalt mixture, are all viscoelastic materials, whose
23
5 mechanical properties are largely influenced by temperature, and the designed asphalt elastic cured
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25 6 track bed will be constructed in the region with different climate characteristics, especially
26 7 temperatures, it is crucial to investigate the bonding behavior under different temperature conditions,
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28 8 as shown in Fig. 6. Generally, with the increase of temperature, all the bonding related parameters
29 9 shown a trend of decrease in index. This trend is similar to the change in modulus of a typical
30 10 viscoelastic material at elevated temperatures, indicating that bonding properties are still to some
31
32 11 extent related to the viscoelastic properties. As a viscoelastic material, the asphalt softens and the
33 12 fluidity increases when the temperature is high, resulting in a decrease of modulus and bonding
34
13 qualities. On the contrary, when the temperature is low, the asphalt becomes brittle and hard, and
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36 14 the modulus and bonding qualities increase at the same time. Additionally, due to the presence of
37 15 crumb rubber, the bonding qualities of Type I are worse than Type II. When the temperature is
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39 16 relatively low (10 and -5 °C), there is an apparent gap between the two types. This is because the
40 17 asphalt becomes brittle and its viscosity deteriorates, resulting in the adhesion between crumb
41 18 rubber and asphalt mixture decreasing significantly, however, such a phenomenon doesn’t exist in
42
43 19 the system of epoxy asphalt mixture, whose low-temperature performance is much better than
44 20 SBS/CR composite modified asphalt mixture. However, when the temperature becomes higher, the
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21 asphalt mixture softens, resulting in a decrease in bonding qualities, and the differences between
46
47 22 Type I and Type II thus fade. This also indicates that the decreasing speed of Type II is much higher
48 23 than that of Type I, meaning that the bonding qualities between EAM and epoxy asphalt mixture
49
50 24 deteriorate faster than that between EAM and SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture.
51 25 Based on the results, although in most conditions the bonding qualities of Type II are superior to
52 26 those of Type I, application of Type II in regions with frequent or large temperature variations should
53
54 27 be avoided. This is because compared with the SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture, the
55 28 epoxy asphalt mixture is more brittle and its deformation resistance is relatively lower [6, 41].
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29 Consequently, when applying Type II to regions with frequent or large variations of temperature,
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58 30 the accumulative temperature stress inside the asphalt mixture has a more extensive influence on
59 31 the epoxy asphalt mixture compared with the SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture. As a
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1 result, Type II is more likely to destroy under these conditions. Moreover, when the temperature is
1 2 higher than 40 °C, the differences among bonding parameters are not significant. So if the
2
3 3 requirements of construction are not quite strict, applying Type I to obtain a better deformation
4 4 resistance of the whole track structure is also acceptable.such temperature variation may lead to the
5
6
5 generation of excess temperature stresses and exacerbate fatigue damage to the structure. Type I
7 6 may be considered in such regions under the condition of meeting the application requirements. In
8 7 summaryHowever, the bonding qualities of Type II are much better than that of Type I, and in most
9
10 8 working conditions, Type II was recommended and Type I is only recommended in some typical
11 9 conditions..
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21 (c)
22 1 Figure 6 Effect of temperature on (a) Strength, (b) Stiffness, and (c) Fracture energy
23
24
2 3.4 Statistical interpretation
25 3 To depict the accuracy of data obtained from laboratory tests as well as the significance of the
26 4 influence of dosage, water, and temperature on bonding performance, statistical analysis was
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28 5 conducted in this section, as shown in Table 6. For brevity, only the dosage influence of bonding
29 6 strength I, water influence of shear stiffness II, and temperature influence of shear bonding energy
30 7 II were detailed in the table. Statistical analysis of other parameters showed similar results. Besides,
31
32 8 all the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients are larger than 0.9, which means that all obtained experiment
33 9 data is reliable. All three kinds of influence factors have significant influences on the bonding
34
10 qualities between sleeper and asphalt blocks, indicating that it is crucial to determine the EAM
35
36 11 dosage as well as the working conditions of the composite structure before applying it to
37 12 construction.
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39 13 Table 6 One-way ANOVA results for bonding quality-related parameters
40 Dependent variables Sum of square df Mean square F-value p-value Sig.
41
42 Between groups 0.130 4 0.033 421.773 4.241E-11 Yes
Bonding
43 Within groups 0.001 10 0.000
44 Strength I
45 Total 0.131 14
47 Shear
Within groups 6771.383 10 677.138
48 stiffness II
49 Total 243877.311 14
50 Shear Between groups 341614.851 4 85403.713 711.537 3.147E-12 Yes
51
52 bonding Within groups 1200.272 10 120.027
53 energy II Total 342815.123 14
54
55 14 4 Mechanical behavior of sleeper-asphalt block composite structure
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57 15 The previous sections mainly focus on the bonding properties between sleeper and asphalt block
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59 16 under different working conditions using laboratory tests and Type II was recommended in most
60 17 working conditions. However, due to the limitation of molding real-size sleeper-asphalt block
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1 composite structures in the door and difficulties in researching the mechanical behavior of
1 2 composite structures during construction, only small-size specimens were investigated in detail in
2
3 3 previous sections. To deeply understand the long-term deformation behavior and mechanical
4 4 behavior of composite structures during construction, an FE model considering the bonding
5
6
5 properties was established and validated in this section, hoping to provide a reliable reference for
7 6 asphalt elastic cured track construction and maintenance.
8 7 4.1 FE model for sleeper-asphalt block composite structure
9
10 8 The basic size of the sleeper-asphalt block composite structure was determined in previous
11 9 research [1, 6] and the same size was chosen in this section, as shown in Fig. 7(a). In this section,
12 10 performance under two kinds of working conditions was investigated, those are long-term
13
14 11 deformation conditions and lifting conditions. During the long-term deformation analysis, the
15 12 composite structure was applied with train load for 5 million and 3 million times, respectively during
16
17 13 the validation process and performance calculation process, as shown in the left figure of Fig. 7(a).
18 14 During the lifting analysis, the lifting load was applied to the bottom of the sleeper, as shown in the
19 15 right figure of Fig. 7(a). To make the structure move at a typical speed during lifting, a moving
20
21 16 boundary with a certain speed was applied to approach the lifting load. To ensure sufficient
22 17 computational efficiency, the mesh size of the sleeper and asphalt block was determined as 0.1 m,
23
18 and the solid element (C3D8R) was applied. Since the asphalt mixture is a viscoelastic material, a
24
25 19 generalized Maxwell model and Prony series were applied to simulate its viscoelastic behavior.
26 20 Based on Ref. [1, 8], the coefficients of the Prony series were detailed in Table 67, and other material
27
28 21 parameters were listed in Table 78.
29 22 Table 6 7 Coefficients of Prony series
30 Relaxation time /s 0.00001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 10 100 1000 10000 100000
31
Type I 0.0254 0.0174 0.0583 0.1153 0.1980 0.2528 0.1732 0.0753 0.0321 0.0111 0.0058
32 Prony series
33 Type II 0.0950 0.2493 0.2278 0.2167 0.0736 0.0518 0.0143 0.0193 0.0139 0.0135 0.0203
34
35 23
36 24 Table 7 8 Material properties of composite structure [6]
37 Young’s modulus /MPa Poisson’s ratio Density /(kg·m-3)
38
39 Sleeper 35000 0.2 2800
40 Type I - 0.3 2400
41
42 Type II - 0.3 2040
43 25 To describe the mechanical behavior of the sleeper-asphalt block interface accurately, defining
44 26 the damage behavior of this interface is of great importance. Generally, there are two ways of
45
46 27 simulating the damage at the interface, namely, cohesive element and cohesive contact. The former
47 28 was usually applied to interface with irrespective of thickness or bulk materials, such as the internal
48
29 cracking of asphalt mixture [42]. The latter is mainly used for interfaces with smaller or negligible
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50 30 thicknesses, such as bonding between two structures. In this study, the cohesive contact method was
51 31 applied to simulate the contact between sleeper and asphalt block for the thickness of bonding EAM
52
53 32 is negligible (usually less than 3 mm) compared with the thickness of sleeper and asphalt block, as
54 33 shown in Fig. 7(b). In such a contact method, the thickness of the contact area was assumed to be
55 34 zero and the damage parameter CSMAXSCRT (C value) was applied to reflect the contact state of
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57 35 the sleeper and asphalt block. The C value of 0 means that the two surfaces are in complete contact
58 36 and the C value of 1 means that the two surfaces are completely separated. In the interval from 0 to
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37 1, the larger the C value indicates the more serious the degree of interface damage, and the worse
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1 the contact state between the sleeper and asphalt block. When defining the cohesive contact, it is
1 2 also necessary to define the key parameters of damage, which depend on the selected damage law.
2
3 3 In this study, the bilinear model was applied to simulate the evolution of bonding behavior, as shown
4 4 in Fig. 7(c) [42]. Where 𝑡𝑐 represents the bonding strength, 𝛿0 is the corresponding displacement
5
5 and 𝛿𝑓 is the displacement when the interface was totally damaged. In the applied FE software
6
7 6 ABAQUS, 𝛿0 and 𝛿𝑓 can be calculated using bonding stiffness K and fracture energy G, which
8 7 were obtained through laboratory tests and were discussed in previous sections. Table 8 9 details
9
10 8 the used bonding parameters under normal conditions (25 °C, without water immersion or freeze-
11 9 thaw cycling) and other conditions that have relatively the same setting methods. After that, the
12 10 principle of maximum nominal principal stress was selected as the beginning of damage, meaning
13
14 11 that when the maximum principal stress at the interface is larger than the set value, the damage will
15 12 begin to evolve [43, 44].
16
17 13 Table 8 9 Bonding parameters under normal conditions
18 Parameter 𝒕𝒄 /MPa K /(MPa·m-1) G /(J·m-2)
19 Normal direction 0.57 356.3 285.0
20
21 Type I First tangent direction 2.4 1090.9 1650.0
22 Second tangent direction 2.4 1090.9 1650.0
23
24
Normal direction 0.88 352.0 687.5
25 Type II First tangent direction 3.89 1295.3 3650.7
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28 14
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15 Figure 7 Schematic of (a) FE model, (b) cohesive contact, and (c) bilinear model
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54 16 The established model was validated via similar research conducted on polyurethane track and
55 17 Type I, as shown in Fig. 8(a) and Fig. 8(b), respectively. During validating via polyurethane track,
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57 18 the long-term deformation characteristics were investigated in detail. The whole loading procedure
58 19 was divided into three parts and the maximum loads were 110, 130, and 150 kN, respectively.
59 20 During each procedure, the ratio of different loading times was 63:147:46 and the material
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1 parameters were referred from Ref. [45], and the reasonability of applying Maxwell model to
1 2 describe the viscoelastic properties of polyurethane has also been validate in this reference.. On the
2
3 3 other hand, in the validation via Type I, a small-scale FE model was established aiming to validate
4 4 the reasonability of the cohesive contact approach, and the load-displacement curve was selected as
5
6
5 the validation curve. As shown in Fig. 8, the simulated and measured values in both validation
7 6 methods show good agreement, and the model can be seen as reasonable in further investigations.
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54 7 Figure 8 Model validation via (a) sleeper-polyurethane block, (b) Type I
55 8 The bonding performance of sleeper-asphalt block composite structure deteriorates during the
56
9 long-term service, which is manifested by increasing accumulative deformation and accumulative
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58 10 C value, however, these two parameters are hard to investigate using laboratory tests. Based on the
59 11 loading methods in previous research [6], the calculation results of accumulative deformation and
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1 accumulative C value of Type I and Type II under 3 million times loading were shown in Fig. 9. It
1 2 can be seen from the Fig. 9(a) that the accumulative deformations of both two types show a trend
2
3 3 of significant increase during the first one million loading, after that, the accumulative deformation
4 4 increases much slower than before during the process of next 4 million times loading, however,
5
6
5 never stopped. As a kind of viscoelastic material, asphalt mixture deforms after each load is applied
7 6 and the deformation can be divided into two parts, namely, recoverable deformation and
8 7 unrecoverable deformation. When irrecoverable deformation exists, the next load will produce less
9
10 8 stress in the structure than the previous one, resulting in less deformation. This smaller deformation
11 9 can also be categorized into recoverable and unrecoverable deformation, and the unrecoverable
12 10 deformation will be accumulated inside the structure, and the accumulated deformation curve shown
13
14 11 in Fig. 9(a) will be obtained after several cycles of loading.
15 12 Moreover, Fig. 9(a) also shows that the long-term deformation of Type II is much smaller than
16
17 13 Type I, meaning that Type II has better long-term performance, however, the bonding performance
18 14 can’t be concluded through this figure simply. This is because the composite structure is composed
19 15 of three parts, those are, PCC sleeper, EAM layer, and asphalt mixture layer. Since the PCC sleeper
20
21 16 can be seen as an elastic material, meaning that the deformation of the structure recovers after each
22 17 loading and there will not be accumulative deformation inside the PCC layer. Besides, the thickness
23
18 of the EAM layer can be ignored compared with the thickness of the other two layers. Consequently,
24
25 19 the long-term deformation of the whole composite structure mainly exists in the asphalt mixture
26 20 layer.the deformation of the composite structure can be divided into three parts, those are,
27
28 21 deformation from sleeper, EAM, and asphalt block. Due to the sleeper deformations of the two types
29 22 being relatively the same, and the deformation of EAM can be ignored, the deformation of the
30 23 asphalt block contributes the most to the accumulative deformation.
31
32 24 During the loading process, the long-term deformation is mainly due to the further compacting
33 25 of the asphalt mixture skeleton and the flow of asphalt binder. Since the two types are applied with
34
26 the same gradation, meaning that the difference between the two types’ long-term deformation does
35
36 27 not result from further compacting of the skeleton. In fact, the main reason for this difference can
37 28 be attributed to the difference in composition of the two kinds of asphalt mixture. Firstly, the
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39 29 presence of dry-process crumb rubber does not react with the asphalt binder and plays a part in the
40 30 asphalt mixture skeleton [8, 46, 47]. However, the bonding quality between crumb rubber and
41 31 asphalt binder was not as good as that between aggregate and asphalt binder, resulting in rubber
42
43 32 particles sliding between the skeleton. These slides are irreversible in the long run, thus a larger
44 33 accumulative deformation in Type I is observed compared with Type II. Secondly, the epoxy asphalt
45
34 mixture is applied in Type II, which is a much more stable asphalt mixture compared with the
46
47 35 SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture applied in Type I. This is because there is a stable
48 36 cross-linked structure after the epoxy resin is cured [48, 49] and this curing process is also
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50 37 irreversible. The cross-linked structure enables the asphalt mixture a hard material with excellent
51 38 deformation resistance, thus in the long run, the accumulative deformation of Type II is less than
52 39 that of Type I. However, in the context of SBS/CR modified asphalt mixture, the presence of CR
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54 40 softens the structure of the asphalt mixture and results in larger deformation under the same load.
55 41 Compared with SBS/CR modified asphalt, the epoxy asphalt mixture is much harder and its
56
42 accumulative deformation is certainly smaller.
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58 43 To evaluate the bonding performance during long-term service of the two types in depth, the
59 44 accumulative C value was calculated and was shown in Fig. 9(b). It can be seen that during the first
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1 one million loadings, the accumulative C values of the two types increase significantly,
1 2 corresponding to the accumulation of deformation. Also in this process, the accumulative C value
2
3 3 of Type I is slightly smaller than that of Type II, which can be attributed to the better deformation
4 4 ability of CR in SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt. During the long-term service process, the
5
6
5 accumulative C value of Type II increases at a pretty slow speed, however, in sharp contrast, the
7 6 accumulative C value of Type I still increases at an apparent speed, which is due to the better fatigue
8 7 properties of epoxy asphalt mixture [6]. Based on the discussions above, Type II was recommended
9
10 8 in track constructions in most conditions for its smaller accumulative deformation and better long-
11 9 term bonding performance.
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10 Figure 9 Life-time (a) accumulative deformation, (b) accumulative C value
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58 11 4.2 Lifting analysis
59 12 Since the subject of this study is a prefabricated sleeper-asphalt block composite structure, this is
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1 a type of structure that needs to be prefabricated and molded in the factory and transported to the
1 2 construction site for installation, thus lifting is inevitable during construction. This section mainly
2
3 3 investigated the bonding performance of the composite structure during both static lifting and
4 4 dynamic lifting processes, aiming to provide a reliable reference for practical construction. During
5
6
5 the lifting process, the slings were installed under the sleeper, as shown in Fig. 1(a) and in the FE
7 6 model, the slings were simplified as moving boundaries, as shown in Fig. 7(a). During the static
8 7 lifting analysis, only the global gravity was applied to the model and the speeds of moving
9
10 8 boundaries were set as 0 m/s. During the dynamic lifting analysis, apart from the added global
11 9 gravity, the speeds of moving boundaries were set as 0.3, 0.6, 0.9, 1.2, and 1.5 m/s, respectively.
12 10 Besides, five different working conditions, namely, normal conditions, high temperature, low
13
14 11 temperature, water immersion, and freeze-thaw conditions, and the bonding parameters were
15 12 collected from previous laboratory tests.
16
17 13 The C value contours of Type I under static lifting conditions and dynamic lifting with a lifting
18 14 speed of 0.9 m/s were selected as the example for analysis and were shown in Fig. 10(a) and Fig.
19 15 10(b), respectively. During the process of static lifting, it can be seen that the maximum value of C
20
21 16 value exists in the middle of the contact surface, however, the value of maximum C value is less
22 17 than 0.01, meaning that the damage at the contact surface is small and the sleeper-asphalt block
23
18 composite structure is in good bonding condition. As for dynamic lifting, the distribution of the C
24
25 19 value is different from that of static lifting, as shown in Fig. 10(b). The maximum value of C value
26 20 exists on the side of the contact surface, meaning t that microcracks are more likely to develop
27
28 21 around the side of the combined structure during dynamic lifting. Besides, the maximum value of
29 22 C value is larger than 0.3 during dynamic lifting, meaning that bonding properties of bonding begin
30 23 to deteriorate and larger speed may lead to unwanted damage to the structure, thus it is crucial to
31
32 24 investigate the maximum value of C value with different lifting speed to avoid unwanted damage.
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18 1 Figure 10 Contour of C value during (a) static lifting and (b) dynamic lifting (Type I, 0.9 m/s)
19 2 As shown in Fig. 11, the C values of the two types under different working conditions with
20
21 3 different lifting speeds were shown in detail. Each color block in the figure indicates the increment
22 4 corresponding to the C value when the speed increases by 0.3 m/s. It can be seen that the C value
23
5 of Type I is larger than Type II at the same working conditions, which has been discussed in previous
24
25 6 sections. Besides, from the increment block, it is apparent that each increment of Type I is larger
26 7 than Type II, meaning that the bonding quality of Type I deteriorates faster than Type II, which may
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28 8 be due to the presence of CR deteriorated the stability of asphalt block, resulting in earlier damage
29 9 to the contact surface. Particularly, for Type I under the high-temperature condition with a lifting
30 10 speed of 1.2 m/s, the C value reaches 1, meaning that some regions of the contact area have failed
31
32 11 under this condition and the destruction of the composite structure has begun. In contrast, the C
33 12 value of Type II is less than 0.8 under any conditions, which indicates that the bonding quality of
34
13 Type II is reasonable at any time and is ready for construction. However, considering. Considering
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36 14 many other influencing factors during the construction process, the C value during lifting should
37 15 still not be too large, so the recommended lifting speed used in this study is 0.9 m/s.
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1 Figure 11 Effect of lifting speed on C values (a) Type I, (b) Type II
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25 2 Apart from the C value, other lifting-related parameters were also calculated in this study, namely
26 3 lateral stress and tensile stress, aiming to reflect the bonding condition during lifting in depth. Fig.
27
28 4 12(a) and Fig. 12(b) show the comparison between static lifting parameters of Type I and Type II as
29 5 well as dynamic lifting parameters, respectively. Interestingly, the lateral stress of Type I is larger
30 6 than that of Type II under normal conditions, however, smaller than that of Type II under other
31
32 7 conditions. From the data perspective, the values of tensile stress of Type II under any conditions
33 8 are nearly the same during static lifting, while those of Type I decrease, indicating that the bonding
34
9 quality of Type II stays the same under these conditions and that of Type I deteriorates to some
35
36 10 extent. As for lateral stress, the differences among different working conditions or different types
37 11 are small, however, the lateral stresses of Type I are still smaller than that of Type II, which further
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39 12 illustrates that Type I deteriorates more than Type II during working. Similarly, the analysis of the
40 13 C-values shows the same results, which will not be repeated here. As for the dynamic lifting process,
41 14 the same results also exist, however, the differences between Type I and Type II are smaller
42
43 15 compared with the static lifting process. Meanwhile, most values during the dynamic lifting process
44 16 are smaller than during the static lifting process, indicating whether the bonding quality of Type I
45
17 or Type II shows some degree of deterioration. Additionally, it should be noted that the C value of
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47 18 Type I under high-temperature conditions is much higher than any other working conditions,
48 19 indicating that Type I is unstable at high-temperature conditions when the lifting speed is 0.9 m/s,
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50 20 which can be attributed to worse high-temperature performance of SBS/CR modified asphalt
51 21 mixture compared with epoxy asphalt mixture. Moreover, it also can be seen that the C value of
52 22 Type II under freeze-thaw conditions is higher than that of Type I, which may be due to low
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54 23 temperatures making the epoxy asphalt mixture more brittle than the SBS/CR modified asphalt
55 24 mixture. Despite this, the value of C value is still within the acceptable limits.
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1 Figure 12 Comparison among (a) static lifting parameters, (b) dynamic lifting parameters of
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59 3 Furthermore, the differences between the static lifting process and dynamic lifting process were
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1 also investigated in detail, as shown in Fig. 13, where D, S, A, and B represent dynamic lifting, and
1 2 static lifting, after working and before working, respectively. Fig. 13(a) compares the differences
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3 3 between static lifting parameters and dynamic parameters and Type I was selected as the example.
4 4 Fig. 13(b) compares the differences among dynamic lifting parameters before and after working and
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5 Type II was selected as the example. It should be noted that the after working means the asphalt
7 6 block after 3 million times loading and the main aim of doing this analysis is to evaluate the bonding
8 7 performance of sleeper-asphalt block composite structure during replacing in the later maintenance
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10 8 process. Generally, the lifting parameters during dynamic lifting are larger than during static lifting
11 9 due to the larger load during the dynamic lifting process. Additionally, during the dynamic lifting
12 10 process, stresses at all five working conditions are relatively the same, indicating that the damages
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14 11 caused by different working conditions are smaller than those caused by lifting load, thus it is crucial
15 12 to choose the proper lifting speed. Meanwhile, the C values at different conditions also show that
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17 13 compared with dynamic lifting, damages caused by static lifting are nearly negligible and the C
18 14 values at high temperatures and freeze-thaw cycling are much larger than in other conditions,
19 15 meaning that it is necessary to control working conditions and lifting speed during construction.
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21 16 Compared with the difference between static lifting parameters and dynamic lifting parameters,
22 17 the differences between dynamic lifting parameters before and after working are much smaller.
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18 From the perspective of stress, the differences are not obvious, which further indicates that during
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25 19 the long-term working, Type II kept its bonding quality and damages did not accumulate much
26 20 inside the structure and the main damage during lifting was caused by dynamic lifting load.
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28 21 Additionally, analysis of the C value also indicates that there is only a slight difference between
29 22 before and after long-term service, which further validated the stability of Type II. Based on the
30 23 analysis above, Type II is recommended as the ideal structure, whether for complex working
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29 1 Figure 13 Comparison among (a) static lifting parameters and dynamic lifting parameters
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3 5 Summary and conclusions
34
4 To improve the bonding performance between the sleeper and asphalt block in asphalt elastic
35
36 5 cured track bed in-depth, a novel kind of EAM was designed through strength and fluidity test. After
37 6 that, the bonding quality between the sleeper and two kinds of asphalt block under different working
38
39 7 conditions using the designed EAM was evaluated through an interfacial shear test and pull-out test.
40 8 Considering that there are difficulties in investigating the long-term performance and lifting
41 9 performance using laboratory tests, an FE model of sleeper-asphalt block composite structure using
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43 10 a cohesive contact approach was established and validated. The bonding qualities of sleeper-asphalt
44 11 block composite structure in the process of long-term service, under different working conditions,
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12 during static lifting and dynamic lifting processes were investigated using the FE model in detail.
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47 13 The main findings and conclusions are given as follows:
48 14 i. The specially designed EAM has excellent bonding qualities and the optimal dosage of EAM
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50 15 was determined as 17 kg·m-2 through comprehensive analysis.
51 16 ii. Type II has better bonding qualities than Type I in most conditions, including normal
52 17 conditions, water immersion, freeze-thaw cycling, and different temperature conditions
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54 18 through analysis of bonding strength, bonding stiffness, and fracture energy.
55 19 iii. With the increase in temperature, the bonding-related parameters show a trend of decreasing
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20 exponentially and reaching the same level when the temperature is relatively high. At this
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58 21 condition, the differences in bonding qualities among different types no longer exist.
59 22 iv. During long-term service, the accumulative deformation of Type II is smaller than that of
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1 Type I as well as the accumulative C value, meaning that Type II has better bonding qualities
1 2 in the long run. Moreover, bonding qualities under different working conditions show the
2
3 3 same trend.
4 4 v. The bonding parameters during the static lifting process are much smaller than during the
5
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5 dynamic lifting process, which is nearly negligible. Considering the C value should not be
7 6 too large, the recommended lifting speed was selected as 0.9 m/s.
8 7 However, only the bonding quality was evaluated and investigated in this study and the research
9
10 8 on the evolution of damage at the interface was lacking as well as the intrinsic rules. Besides, other
11 9 phenomena at the interface such as cracking initiation and propagation need to be investigated in
12 10 detail. Future studies will be conducted on the damage initiation and evolution at the interface using
13
14 11 advanced monitoring methods. and Aa more accurate FE model reflecting the evolution of bonding
15 12 conditions at the interface needs to be established.
16
17 13 Declaration of competing interest
18
19 14 The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal
20
21 15 relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
22
23 16 Acknowledgment
24
25 17 The authors acknowledge the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of
26 18 China (No. 52078130), Technology Research and Development Program of China State Railway
27
28 19 Group Co., Ltd (No. P2019G030).
29
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Detailed Response to Reviewers
Dear editors,
On behalf of my co-authors, we thank you editors and reviewers very much for your
positive and constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled "
Interlayer bonding quality evaluation of sleeper-asphalt block composite
structure applied to asphalt elastic cured track bed " (COBUILTMAT-D-23-
07879). We have studied the comments carefully and have made revisions which are
marked in the paper. We have tried our best to revise our manuscript according to the
comments. Attached please find the revised version, which we would like to submit for
your kind consideration.
We would like to express our great appreciation to you and the reviewers for your
comments on our paper. Looking forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
You Wu
1
Dear editors and reviewers,
Please find attached a revised version of our manuscript.
Your comments and those of the reviewers were highly insightful and enabled us to
greatly improve the quality of our manuscript. In the following pages are our point-by-
point responses to each of the comments of the reviewers.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
We shall look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
Yours sincerely,
You Wu and co-authors.
Reviewer #1:
This paper investigates the bonding quality of a sleeper-asphalt block composite
structure. Comments are provided for authors' considerations for improvement.
The experimental design should be introduced more effectively after stating the
objectives.
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. To make the statement of
experiments more reasonable, the objective of this research at the end of section 1 was
simplified. Besides, some details of experiments were added or modified in section 2,
which were highlighted in the revised manuscript with changes marked.
Figure 1 requires improvement as it is currently too small, affecting its readability. This
issue is also present in some other figures.
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. All figures in the manuscript have
2
been replaced with larger images, which were clearer for reading, and the layout of the
manuscript has been improved at the same time.
In Section 3.1, you discuss four different parameters. Please clarify which parameter is
the controlling factor for determining the optimal dosage, and whether this approach
can be easily implemented.
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. In fact, three kinds of parameters are
discussed in this section, those are, strength, stiffness, and fracture energy. Each image
in Figure 4 illustrates the differences between bonding and shearing and between Type
I and Type II for a specific parameter. From the images, it is evident that when the EAM
dosage is 17 kg·m-2, figures for each category are all the highest, that is to say, the
interfacial bonding condition is the best with this EAM dosage. Therefore, a controlling
factor can not be summarized from the experiments conducted in this study.
However, this method of determining optimal EAM dosage is still reasonable, as
each category follows the same change rule, that is, first increase then decrease,
meaning that it is easy to find an optimal dosage using these parameters. Besides, the
strength and stiffness can be obtained easily using the interfacial shear tests and pull-
out tests introduced in this study. Based on the experiment data, the fracture energy can
also be calculated using the methods introduced in Ref. [1]. In summary, the method in
this study does not require complicated experiments or calculations, meaning that it is
an easy way of evaluating bonding qualities.
[1] Y. Fan, H. Chen, X. Yi, G. Xu, X. Cai, Y. Zhou, S. Huang, Y. Wu, H. Wang, J. Yang, W. Huang,
Cracking resistance evaluation of epoxy asphalt mixtures with 100% reclaimed asphalt pavement
(RAP), Construction and Building Materials 395 (2023) 132320.
The paper lacks statistical analysis. The authors should provide compelling evidence to
support their findings.
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. Statistical analysis was conducted
to depict the accuracy of data obtained from laboratory tests as well as the significance
3
of the influence of dosage, water, and temperature on bonding performance. The results
were introduced in section 3.4, as shown in the revised manuscript. For brevity, only
some of the statistical analysis results were detailed in this section.
In Figure 6, consider adding standard deviation data, and please specify how many
replicates were used.
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. The standard error bars were added
to the figure. Besides, three replicate specimens were tested and the average value was
used as the final value, which method is the same as determining dosage and water
effects.
Please review the grammar throughout the paper. For example, on Page 10, Line 25,
"main" should be replaced with "mainly".
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. The grammar and spelling of the
manuscript have been revised in detail.
Has the Finite Element model been validated with field data?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. It has been improved. Figure 8
introduces the validation of the FE model, which consists of two parts.
The first one is validation using the data of a long-term deformation test for a sleeper-
polyurethane block. In this part, a sleeper-polyurethane block composite model using
the same establishing method as the sleeper-asphalt mixture was established. The field
data of sleeper-polyurethane block composite structure was collected from Ref. [1],
which is a master dissertation from the China Academy of Railway Sciences and can
be accessed through the links below:
https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?filename=1021122767.nh&dbname=CMF
DTEMP
Research on the Track Irregularity and Treatment of Subgrade—bridge Transition
Section for Han—Yi Railway.pdf
4
The reference data is in Figure 5-9 on Page 51 of the dissertation. In addition,
previous research has proved that the Maxwell model can be used to describe the
viscoelastic properties of polyurethane, which is the same as that of asphalt mixture [2].
Consequently, using data from the sleeper-polyurethane block to validate the sleeper-
epoxy asphalt mixture block model is reasonable.
The second part of validation is using data from small-scale specimens. In this part,
an FE model of the Type I specimen was established, and the field data of the Type I
was used to validate the reasonability of bonding-related parameters, which are, 𝒕𝒄 , K,
and G, and are shown in Table 9 of the revised manuscript.
[1] T. Guo. Research on the Track Irregularity and Treatment of Subgrade—bridge Transition
Section for Han—Yi Railway (2021), China Academy of Railway Sciences.
[2] H. Chen, A.R. Trivedi, C.R. Siviour, Application of Linear Viscoelastic Continuum Damage
Theory to the Low and High Strain Rate Response of Thermoplastic Polyurethane, Experimental
Mechanics 60(7) (2020) 925-936.
Please also discuss the limitations of this study and future studies if any.
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. Limitations and future studies of this
study were discussed behind the conclusions. Some details were added for better
understanding, as shown in the revised manuscript.
Reviewer #2:
1. Page 3- from line 24: Can the author provide more information about the design and
characteristics of the specially developed EAM, such as its composition and properties?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. The specially developed EAM was
composed of high-quality limestone produced from Maanshan City, Anhui Province,
China, epoxy resin (component A), curing agent (component B), SBS modified asphalt
produced by Jiangsu Zhonghong Environment Protection Technology Co., Ltd
(Jiangyin, China). All the basic properties of these materials were introduced in section
2.1. In addition, the gradation of the EAM was also specially designed following the
Talbol theory, and the design process was detailed in section 2.2.1.
5
2. Page 7- line 52: What specific laboratory tests were conducted to determine the
optimal EAM dosage of 17 kg·m-2, and can the author provide more details about these
tests?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. The main purpose of section 3.1 is
to introduce the process of determining optimal EAM dosage. To reach the goal, shear
strength and stiffness were tested using laboratory interfacial shear tests; bonding
strength and stiffness were tested using laboratory pul-out tests; shear fracture energy
and bonding fracture energy were calculated using the laboratory tests data. All the tests
were conducted using a universal testing machine (UTM, UTM-25, IPC Global,
CONTROLS, Milan, Italy). The test conditions, basic settings, and calculation methods
were introduced in section 2.2.3. Besides, since the calculation steps of fracture energy
were relatively complicated compared with stiffness and strength, these steps were
omitted for brevity. Detailed calculation methods and steps were introduced in Ref. [1].
[1] Y. Fan, H. Chen, X. Yi, G. Xu, X. Cai, Y. Zhou, S. Huang, Y. Wu, H. Wang, J. Yang, W. Huang,
Cracking resistance evaluation of epoxy asphalt mixtures with 100% reclaimed asphalt pavement
(RAP), Construction and Building Materials 395 (2023) 132320.
3. How were the EAM dosage and bonding properties related in the study, and was the
effect of dosage considered under various working conditions?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. The influences of EAM dosage on
bonding properties are detailed according to bonding and shear strength, bonding and
shear stiffness, and bonding and shear fracture energy. Generally, the larger values of
these parameters reflect better shear and pull damage resistance, meaning that larger
loads are required to destroy the structure under typical conditions. Consequently, these
mechanical parameters can be applied to evaluate the bonding qualities of composite
structures.
Besides, for asphalt mixture and asphalt mortar, their mechanical properties
deteriorate after water immersion and freeze-thaw cycling [1], and similar rules exist in
6
epoxy asphalt mixture and EAM [2, 3]. Besides, there are also researches focusing on
temperature effects on the mechanical properties of asphalt mixture as well as epoxy
asphalt mixture and EAM [2, 4,5]. Generally, the asphalt mixture softens with the
increase in temperature. Typically, when the EAM softens, the bonding quality between
the PCC sleeper and asphalt block is thus weakened for the origination of bonding
qualities derived from the EAM. Consequently, during the process of determining EAM
dosage, only normal working conditions and room temperature conditions were
researched, and the effects of water and temperature were detailed in sections 3.2 and
3.3.
[1] W. Wu, W. Jiang, D. Yuan, R. Lu, J. Shan, J. Xiao, A.W. Ogbon, A review of asphalt-filler
interaction: Mechanisms, evaluation methods, and influencing factors, Construction and Building
Materials 299 (2021).
[2] L. Zu-yuan, W. Hou-zhi, S. Chen-guang, C. Xing, Y. Jun, Y. Yun-hong, Evaluation of the
fractures of asphalt concrete added with rubber particles based on the fine aggregate mixtures,
Construction and Building Materials 332 (2022).
[3] X. Yi, H. Chen, H. Wang, C. Shi, J. Yang, The feasibility of using epoxy asphalt to recycle a
mixture containing 100% reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), Construction and Building Materials
319 (2022).
[4] A. Behnood, Application of rejuvenators to improve the rheological and mechanical properties
of asphalt binders and mixtures: A review, Journal of Cleaner Production 231 (2019) 171-182.
[5] A. Behnood, A review of the warm mix asphalt (WMA) technologies: Effects on thermo-
mechanical and rheological properties, Journal of Cleaner Production 259 (2020).
4. What are the practical implications of the EAM dosage for construction and
maintenance in the field?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. The sleeper-asphalt block composite
structures need to be manufactured in the factory in front and transferred to the
construction site for installation, which is a crucial process for maintaining all pre-
fabricated units of the same quality. During the process of manufacturing each unit in
the factory, EAM dosage is the key parameter ensuring the PCC sleeper and asphalt
block are bonded with the same quality, thus the quality of the whole track structure
can be ensured both during the construction and maintenance process.
7
5. Page 17- line 47: The study mentions that Type II has better bonding qualities than
Type I, but what specific characteristics of the epoxy asphalt mixture contribute to this
difference?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. During the laboratory tests of Type
I, the destruction of the specimen occurs in the part of the asphalt mixture, that is, the
SBS/CR composite modified asphalt part, as shown in the left image of Figure 3(a). In
contrast, the destruction of Type II occurs in the interface between the PCC sleeper and
epoxy asphalt blocks, that is, the EAM part of the composite structure, as shown in the
right image of Figure 3(a). In fact, whether the epoxy asphalt mixture or the EAM, both
their strength and stiffness are much higher than those of the crumb rubber asphalt
mixture. Consequently, when applying Type I to interfacial shear and pull-out tests, the
weak interface exists inside the SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture rather
than the EAM, corresponding to the experiment phenomenons. However, when
applying Type II to those tests, the destruction occurs in the EAM part. This
phenomenon can be attributed to the presence of crumb rubber, which decreases the
overall adhesion between asphalt binder and aggregates, and the strength as well as the
stiffness of SBS/CR composite modified asphalt mixture thus lower than those of epoxy
asphalt and EAM, resulting in the differences of destruction forms between the two
types. In fact, the bonding parameters of Type I are the strength parameters of the
SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture.
The explanation for this phenomenon has been introduced in the second paragraph
of section 3.1 and this paragraph has been rewritten for better understanding, as shown
in the revised manuscript.
8
6. How were the differences in bonding quality between Type I and Type II quantified
and assessed in the laboratory tests?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. These differences were quantified
by comparing shear and bonding strength, shear and bonding stiffness as well as shear
and bonding fracture energy under different conditions. Generally, the larger these
values are, the better the bonding quality is.
7. Can the author elaborate on the effect of temperature on the bonding properties and
why Type II is recommended for certain temperature conditions?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. Section 3.3 discussed the
temperature effects of bonding properties. In general, values of each bonding parameter
decrease in an exponential trend. This is easy to understand because the asphalt mixture
softens when applied to high-temperature conditions. Moreover, it also can be
concluded that the bonding quality of Type II is better than that of Type I at most
temperature conditions. When the temperature is relatively low, the advantages of Type
II over Type I are not as obvious because both the two types have a higher absolute
value of bonding parameters; however, when the temperature increases, all parameters
decrease to a low value, meaning that under these conditions, a larger value is more
preferable.
However, compared with the SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture, the
epoxy asphalt mixture is more brittle and its deformation resistance is relatively lower
[1, 2]. Consequently, when applying Type II to regions with frequent or large variations
of temperature, the accumulative temperature stress inside the asphalt mixture has a
more extensive influence on the epoxy asphalt mixture compared with the SBS/CR
composite-modified asphalt mixture. As a result, Type II is more likely to destroy under
these conditions. Moreover, when the temperature is higher than 40 °C, the differences
among bonding parameters are not significant. So if the requirements of construction
are not quite strict, applying Type I to obtain a better deformation resistance of the
9
whole track structure is also acceptable.
The explanation for this phenomenon has been introduced in section 3.3 and some
details in this section were added or modified for better understanding, as shown in the
revised manuscript.
[1] C. Shi, H. Zhang, T. Wang, Y. Zhou, S. Liu, H. Wang, J. Yang, Y. Xu, L. Qie, Design and
performance evaluation of Bi-block precast rubberized epoxy asphalt trackbed for railway,
Construction and Building Materials 313 (2021) 125347.
[2] B. Kök, M. Yilmaz, A. Geçkil, Evaluation of Low-Temperature and Elastic Properties of Crumb
Rubber– and SBS-Modified Bitumen and Mixtures, Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering 25
(2013) 257-265.
8. Page 11- line 10: In the section on long-term deformation, what was the mechanism
behind the difference in accumulative deformation between Type I and Type II?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. The composite structure is
composed of three parts, those are, PCC sleeper, EAM layer, and asphalt mixture layer.
Since the PCC sleeper can be seen as an elastic material, meaning that the deformation
of the structure recovers after each loading and there will not be accumulative
deformation inside the PCC layer. Besides, the thickness of the EAM layer can be
ignored compared with the thickness of the other two layers. Consequently, the long-
term deformation of the whole composite structure mainly exists in the asphalt mixture
layer.
During the loading process, the long-term deformation is mainly due to the further
compacting of the asphalt mixture skeleton and the flow of asphalt binder. Since the
two types are applied with the same gradation, meaning that the difference between the
two types’ long-term deformation does not result from further compacting of the
skeleton.
In fact, the main reason for this difference can be attributed to the difference in
composition of the two kinds of asphalt mixture. Firstly, the presence of dry-process
crumb rubber does not react with the asphalt binder and plays a part in the asphalt
mixture skeleton [1, 2]. However, the bonding quality between crumb rubber and
10
asphalt binder was not as good as that between aggregate and asphalt binder, resulting
in rubber particles sliding between the skeleton. These slides are irreversible in the long
run, thus a larger accumulative deformation in Type I is observed compared with Type
II.
Secondly, the epoxy asphalt mixture is applied in Type II, which is a much more
stable asphalt mixture compared with the SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture
applied in Type I. This is because there is a stable cross-linked structure after the epoxy
resin is cured [3, 4] and this curing process is also irreversible. The cross-linked
structure enables the asphalt mixture a hard material with excellent deformation
resistance, thus in the long run, the accumulative deformation of Type II is less than
that of Type I.
The explanation for this phenomenon has been introduced in section 4.1 and some
details in this section were added or modified for better understanding, as shown in the
revised manuscript.
[1] Y. Wu, C. Shi, Y. Yu, H. Chen, Y. Fan, H. Wang, J. Yang, W. Huang, Dynamic behavior of precast
epoxy asphalt track bed for transition zone in high-speed railway: A numerical approach,
Transportation Geotechnics 40 (2023) 100960.
[2] C. Shi, Y. Wu, C. Fu, J. Yang, Mechanical properties of rubberized epoxy asphalt mixture used
in railway infrastructure, Advances in Functional Pavements, CRC Press2024, pp. 22-26.
[3] Q. Xiang, F. Xiao, Applications of epoxy materials in pavement engineering, Construction and
Building Materials 235 (2020).
[4] P. Mohan, A Critical Review: The Modification, Properties, and Applications of Epoxy Resins,
Polymer-Plastics Technology and Engineering 52(2) (2013) 107-125.
9. Page 17- line 59: Can the author provide insights into the factors contributing to the
differences in bonding qualities under different working conditions?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. Three influence factors of bonding
qualities are investigated in this study, those are, the EAM dosage, water, and
temperature.
Based on the analysis in section 3.1, the EAM dosage has a significant influence on
bonding qualities. For Type I, the strength of EAM is much higher than the SBS/CR
11
composite-modified asphalt mixture, thus the tested bonding parameters actually are
the strength of the asphalt mixture, reflecting that the EAM has an excellent bonding
quality between sleeper and asphalt mixture. For Type II, with the increase of EAM
dosage, the bonding quality first increases and then decreases. This is because higher
EAM dosage results in a thicker EAM layer, which is a weaker layer compared with
PCC sleeper and epoxy asphalt mixture layer, and the destructions are likely to occur
in this layer. Consequently, the bonding quality decreases when the EAM dosage is
extremely high (larger than 17 kg·m-2). Detailed influences of EAM dosage on bonding
qualities are introduced in responses to the 3rd review.

In terms of water influence, the infiltration of moisture leads to a decrease in the bond
force between the asphalt and the aggregate, which results in a decrease in the value of
the measured bond parameter [1, 2]. Besides, for temperature effect, asphalt mixture
softens with the increase of temperature, which is discussed in section 3.3 and responses
to the 7th review.
[1] A. Behnood, Application of rejuvenators to improve the rheological and mechanical properties
of asphalt binders and mixtures: A review, Journal of Cleaner Production 231 (2019) 171-182.
[2] A. Behnood, A review of the warm mix asphalt (WMA) technologies: Effects on thermo-
mechanical and rheological properties, Journal of Cleaner Production 259 (2020).
10. Page 14- line 24: In the lifting analysis, can the author explain how the dynamic
lifting process affects the bonding qualities compared to static lifting?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. During the lifting process, the whole
structure is subjected to gravity and the pulling force of the sling. However during the
static lifting process, the pulling force only needs to be balanced against gravity; in
contrast, the pulling force needs to overcome gravity and lift the structure, which leads
to a larger load on the structure, under this condition, the bonding quality between
sleeper and asphalt block decreases.
It is worth noting that the thickness of the EAM layer is ignored and only bonding-
related parameters are used in the FE model, as shown in Table 9 of the revised
12
manuscript. The bonding quality of the composite structure is reflected by the parameter
CSMAXSCRT (C value), which is a virtual parameter in FE modeling and can not be
obtained through laboratory tests. The C value reflects the contact condition between
two parts of the FE model, ranging from 0~1. The larger the value is, the worse the
contact condition is, and when this value reaches 1, the two parts separate. In the
sleeper-asphalt block composite structure, completely separate means the bonding
between the sleeper and asphalt block has been destroyed, thus the C value can be used
to describe the bonding qualities in this study.
11. Page 14- line 44: What are the practical considerations for selecting a lifting speed
of 0.9 m/s, and how does it strike a balance between construction efficiency and
bonding quality?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. The effect of listing speed on
bonding qualities has been shown in Figure 11. It is apparent that with the increase in
lifting speed, the C value increases significantly under any working conditions. When
the lifting speed reaches 1.2 m/s, the C value of Type I reaches 1 at high-temperature
conditions; in contrast, the C value is 0.87 when the lifting speed is 0.9 m/s. To ensure
that the damage will not occur under any working conditions, as well as to allow
sufficient margin for error in construction, 0.9 m/s was selected.
12. Can the author elaborate on how the bonding parameters during dynamic lifting,
such as lateral stress and tensile stress, influence the bonding quality?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. There are three parameters were
discussed in this study, those are, C value, lateral stress, and tensile stress. The C value
reflects the contact conditions between the PCC sleeper and asphalt block directly,
which has been introduced in the responses to the 10th and 11th reviews. The other two
parameters reflect the stress level at the interface. In the established FE model in this
study, the damage criteria is max principle stress, meaning that when the stress at the
interface is larger than a typical value, the damage, that is, cracking, in the interface
13
begins to evolve. Consequently, the larger the lateral stress or the tensile stress is, the
larger the stress level at the interface is, and the bonding quality between the PCC
sleeper and asphalt block becomes worse.
13. How does the bonding quality of Type II remain stable during long-term service,
and can the author explain the specific mechanisms involved?
Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. As explained in responses to the 8th
review, epoxy asphalt mixture as well as EAM are stable and hard materials due to the
presence of epoxy resin. The irreversible curing reaction of epoxy resin and the stable
cross-linked structure inside the epoxy asphalt mixture enables the long-term stability
of Type II [1, 2].
[1] Q. Xiang, F. Xiao, Applications of epoxy materials in pavement engineering, Construction and
Building Materials 235 (2020).
[2] P. Mohan, A Critical Review: The Modification, Properties, and Applications of Epoxy Resins,
Polymer-Plastics Technology and Engineering 52(2) (2013) 107-125.
14
Highlights Click here to view linked References
1. An in-depth method of evaluating the bonding quality between PCC sleeper and asphalt blocks
in elastic asphalt cured track bed was established.
2. The bonding quality under different working conditions as well as different construction
processes were researched in detail.
3. A method of connecting laboratory bonding tests and an FE model was established.
Revised Manuscript Click here to view linked References
1 1 Interlayer bonding quality evaluation of sleeper-

2
3
4 2 asphalt block composite structure applied to asphalt
5
6
7
3 elastic cured track bed
8 4 You Wua,b, Yanbing Zhoua, Chenguang Shia, Yunhong Yua, Yulou Fana, Xing Caic, Yixin Zhoua,
9
10 5 Houzhi Wanga,, Minghui Gongd, Jinxiang Hongd, Jun Yanga,b,, Wei Huanga
11 6
12 7 a School of Transportation, Southeast University, #2 Southeast University Road, Nanjing 211189, PR China
13
8 b National Demonstration Center for Experimental Road and Traffic Engineering Education (Southeast University),
14
15 9 Southeast University, #2 Southeast University Road, Nanjing 211189, PR China
16 c
17 10 The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
d
18 11 Jiangsu Sobute New Materials Co. Ltd., Nanjing, PR China
19 12
20
21 13 Abstract: To improve the bonding quality between the sleeper and asphalt block used in the asphalt
22 14 elastic cured track bed, a novel epoxy asphalt mortar (EAM) was designed in this study. The optimal
23
15 dosage of EAM was determined as 17 kg·m-2 through laboratory tests. Besides, to understand the
24
25 16 bonding quality in depth, the bonding performance of two kinds of sleeper-asphalt block composite
26 17 structures under different conditions were investigated through interfacial shear test and pull-out
27
28 18 test, and the results show that the bonding quality between sleeper and epoxy asphalt mixture using
29 19 designed EAM is better than that between sleeper and styrene–butadiene–styrene/crumb rubber
30 20 (SBS/CR) composite modified asphalt mixture. Meanwhile, bonding qualities decrease in an
31
32 21 exponential trend with the increase in temperature. Besides, an FE model using a cohesive contact
33 22 approach at the interface was established and validated to evaluate the bonding performance during
34
23 the long-term service and lifting process. The differences among static lifting parameters and
35
36 24 dynamic lifting parameters were evaluated and the optimal lifting speed was selected as 0.9 m/s.
37 25 The results also show that the sleeper-epoxy asphalt mixture composite structure has better bonding
38
39 26 performance at most conditions and this structure was selected as the ideal structure for construction.
40 27 Keywords: Asphalt elastic cured track bed, Epoxy asphalt mortar (EAM), interfacial bonding
41 28 evaluation, cohesive contact, lifting analysis, interfacial damage analysis
42
43
44
29 1 Introduction
45
30 High-speed railway is welcomed worldwide for its high efficiency, high safety, high comfort level,
46
47 31 and low transport costs [1]. With the development in passenger traffic and widespread application
48 32 scenarios, the inherent disadvantages of traditional ballasted track and ballastless track have been
49
50 33 magnified, such as fly ballast for ballasted track and hard to maintain for ballastless track [2, 3]. To
51 34 solve these problems, the concept of an elastic cured track bed has been proposed, which is seen as
52 35 a reasonable solution to track structures in the future for its excellent performance in reducing
53
54 36 vibration and future maintenance [4-6]. Researchers have proved that emulsified asphalt [4] and
55 37 polyurethane [7] possess the potential to construct elastic cured track beds, however, there are
56
38 intrinsic disadvantages, poor long-term performance for emulsified asphalt track [4] and high
57
58
59
60  Corresponding author. Jun Yang: yangjun@seu.edu.cn, Houzhi Wang: houzhi_wang@seu.edu.cn
61
1
62
63
64
65
1 construction costs for polyurethane track, limited their promotional use. Similarly, some researchers
1 2 suggested that epoxy asphalt track has better working performance compared with polyurethane
2
3 3 track and have the potential to overcome the disadvantages mentioned above due to the excellent
4 4 laboratory properties of epoxy asphalt mixtures [1, 6, 8-10].
5
6
5 To protect the track substructure and effectively disperse the train load, sleeper is a necessary
7 6 component of the track structure. In addition, the degree of bonding between the sleeper and the
8 7 substructure plays a significant role in how well the sleeper fulfills its role. Traditionally, sleepers
9
10 8 are embedded in the gravel ballast or bonded with concrete slabs using concrete asphalt, respectively
11 9 for ballasted and ballastless tracks. However, for epoxy asphalt track, the track material is
12 10 prefabricated in the factory into prefabricated blocks with grooves, and the Portland cement concrete
13
14 11 (PCC) sleeper is installed into the groove, thus a basic unit of the elastic cured track bed is formed
15 12 [6, 11], as shown in Fig. 1. The left side of these two schematics are the actual units, and the right
16
17 13 side shows the structure schematic. After assembling these prefabricated blocks in the factory, they
18 14 will be transformed into construction sites and installed on-site. During this process, lifting of these
19 15 prefabricated units is unavoidable, as shown in Fig. 1(a), meaning that the bonding quality between
20
21 16 the PCC sleeper and blocks needs to be verified under more conditions and is not limited to the
22 17 completion of the whole track structure.
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33 (a)
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44 (b)
45
18 Figure 1 Basic unit of (a) epoxy asphalt track, (b) polyurethane track
46
47 19 Typically, in conventional ballastless structures, bonding between PCC sleeper and track slab is
48 20 simplified to bonding between two parts of Portland cement concrete (PCC) [12] and under this
49
50 21 condition, cement asphalt mortar (CAM) is always used as a bonding agent [13, 14]. In response to
51 22 this bonding situation, researchers have pointed out that emulsified asphalt can reduce elastic
52 23 modulus and make a contribution to improve the viscoelasticity of CAM, which are beneficial for
53
54 24 both reducing the overall track stiffness and improving the synergistic deformation of the whole
55 25 track structure [15, 16]. Moreover, for the problem of emulsified asphalt is easy to debond when
56
26 applied to track structure, stabilizer, and expansive agent are introduced to improve the interfacial
57
58 27 bonding behavior between PCC slabs [12, 14]. Similarly, to improve the bonding strength, some
59 28 modifiers, for example, polymer latex, are applied to CAM, and proper A/C (asphalt to cement ratio
60
61
2
62
63
64
65
1 in mass) is determined by both laboratory and field tests [17]. In addition, with the development of
1 2 high-speed railways, various new forms of track structures began to appear and there is also a
2
3 3 bonding problem between the new structural components. For example, Chen investigated the
4 4 interface damage between PCC slabs and asphalt concrete waterproofing layer (ACWL) through
5
6
5 field tests and numerical calculations [13].
7 6 However, different from the bonding forms mentioned above, bonding between PCC sleeper and
8 7 epoxy asphalt block is a new form in railway engineering and was little studied before. Such bonding
9
10 8 form is more likely to bond between PCC slabs and ACWL, however, the strength of the epoxy
11 9 asphalt mixture is much higher than the asphalt mixture applied to ACWL [8, 18-20], meaning that
12 10 the bonding material between PCC sleeper and epoxy asphalt block need to be redesigned and the
13
14 11 bonding behavior need to be further investigated. To meet the requirements of lateral resistance, of
15 12 which the track bed contributes 65%[21], the shear strength between the PCC sleeper and asphalt
16
17 13 block is highly required [9]. There have been a series of attempts aiming to find high bonding
18 14 strength materials in pavement engineering and bridge decks [22-24], among which the EAM is
19 15 seen as an excellent bonding material for its outstanding shear resistance and moisture resistance
20
21 16 [24]. However, some researchers also pointed out that when it comes to higher temperatures (60 °C),
22 17 the bonding strength between the PCC sleeper and asphalt block decreases by about 50%, indicating
23
18 that it can’t meet the usage requirements at high temperatures [22]. Considering the different
24
25 19 working conditions of the elastic asphalt track bed, the bonding material needs to be specially
26 20 selected and designed. Moreover, it is crucial to evaluate the working performance of sleeper-asphalt
27
28 21 composite structure for a selected material.
29 22 To select the proper material for bonding between the PCC sleeper and epoxy asphalt mixture
30 23 used in the epoxy asphalt elastic track bed, novel EAM. Then a series of PCC and asphalt mixture
31
32 24 composite specimens were molded in the laboratory and corresponding laboratory tests were
33 25 conducted to evaluate the bonding ability. Next, a finite element (FE) model was established to
34
26 evaluate the mechanical behavior of composite structures during the static and dynamic lifting
35
36 27 process of construction. Finally, a summary and conclusions were detailed in the last section.
37
38 28 2 Materials and methods
39
40 29 To meet the requirements of high bonding strength between the sleeper and asphalt block, a novel
41 30 EAM was specially designed. Additionally, the two kinds of PCC (representing sleeper) and asphalt
42
43 31 mixture (representing asphalt block) composite specimens were molded to validate the reasonability
44 32 of designed EAM. Besides, the way of conducting interfacial shear tests was also introduced in this
45
33 section.
46
47 34 2.1 Raw materials
48 35 The acid aggregates, such as granite and sandstone, were preferred in railway track construction,
49
50 36 especially in ballast construction [25], however, there are difficulties in meeting the requirements
51 37 of bonding strength between aggregates and asphalt binders when using acid aggregates. To
52 38 maximize the bonding ability of the designed EAM, high-quality limestone, which is widely used
53
54 39 in pavement engineering, was selected as the aggregate. The fine aggregates and fillers used in this
55 40 section are high-quality limestone produced from Maanshan City, Anhui Province, China, which
56
41 meets the requirements in specification JTG E42-2005 [26]. The critical physical property
57
58 42 parameters of fine aggregates and filler are detailed in Table 1.
59 43 Table 1 Physical properties of fine aggregates and filler
60
61
3
62
63
64
65
Item Technique index Test result Requirements
1
Fine aggregates Density /(g·cm ) -3 2.688 ≥2.50
2
3 Robustness (Aggregate size > 0.3mm) / % 3.1 ≤12
4 Sand equivalency /% 75 ≥60
5
6 Filler Density /(g·cm-3) 2.768 ≥2.50
7 Plasticity index /% 3 <4
8 1 The epoxy asphalt (EA) used in this study consists of three components, those are, epoxy resin
9
10 2 (component A), curing agent (component B), and SBS-modified asphalt binder. In this study, the
11 3 ratio of component A, component B, and SBS-modified asphalt binder was 2:2:6 in weight. The
12
13
4 SBS asphalt binder was produced by Jiangsu Zhonghong Environment Protection Technology Co.,
14 5 Ltd. (Jiangyin, China) and the SBS polymer content was 4% in weight. As epoxy resin has been
15 6 widely and maturely used in bridge decking and pavement engineering, the basic properties of epoxy
16
17 7 resin were tested following the specification JTG/T 3364-02-2019 [27] and GB/T 30598-2014 [28].
18 8 Some critical parameters of epoxy resin and curing agent are listed in Table 2. Besides, the basic
19
9 properties of SBS-modified asphalt binder were tested through JTG E20-2011 [29] and some critical
20
21 10 parameters were detailed in Table 3.
22 11 Table 2 Physical properties of epoxy resin, curing agent
23
24 Item Technical index Test result
25 Epoxy resin Density /(g·cm-3) 1.167
26
27 Viscosity (25 °C) /Pa·s 14.75
28
29 Curing agent Density /(g·cm-3) 0.851
30
31 Viscosity (25 °C) /Pa·s 41
32
33 12
34
35 13 Table 3 Physical properties of SBS-modified asphalt binder
36 Technique index Test result Requirements
37
38 Penetration (25 °C, 100 g, 5 s) /0.1 mm 56 40~60
39
40 Ductility (5 °C, 5 cm·min-1) /cm 42 ≥20
41
42 Softening point /°C 78 ≥60
43
44 Dynamic viscosity (60 °C) / Pa·s 1.8 ≤3
45
46 14 The hot mix technique was applied in this study. The SBS-modified asphalt binder was first
47 15 heated to 190 °C for 2 hours and the aggregates were heated to 200 °C for 4 hours before mixing.
48
49 16 The mixing temperature was maintained at 200 °C during mixing. Before the aggregates were added
50 17 into the mixer, the epoxy components and SBS-modified asphalt binder needed to be stirred
51 18 manually in the mixer for a while to ensure that they were well mixed. Then the fine aggregates and
52
53 19 filler were added into the mixer separately, among which the fine aggregates were added into the
54 20 mixer in front and mixed for 60 s, and then the filler was added into the mixer for another 60 s
55
21 mixing.
56
57 22 2.2 Methods
58
59 23 2.2.1 Gradation design
60 24 Currently, there is a lack of uniform standards for the maximum aggregate size of fine aggregate
61
4
62
63
64
65
1 used in asphalt mortar. The scenarios of using aggregates with aggregate sizes of 9.5, 4.75, 2.36,
1 2 and 1.18 mm as the maximum aggregate size in asphalt mortar have been presented in previous
2
3 3 studies [30-33]. Given that the EAM designed in this study should have enough fluidity to cover the
4 4 spaces between the sleeper and asphalt block, the maximum aggregate size in the EAM gradation
5
6
5 shouldn't be too huge. Meanwhile, the designed EAM should possess enough strength to avoid
7 6 unwanted cracking [33], thus the maximum aggregate needs to be larger than a typical level. Based
8 7 on the requirements of two aspects of performance mentioned above, 2.36 mm was chosen as the
9
10 8 maximum aggregate size in this study. The gradation of fine aggregates is detailed in Table 4.
11 9 Table 4 Gradation of fine aggregate without filler
12
Sieve size /mm 2.36 1.18 0.6 0.3 0.15 <0.075
13
14 Proportion /% 34.2 16.5 15.8 7.6 10.0 15.9
15 10 After the basic gradation of fine aggregate was selected, it is crucial to determine the content of
16
17 11 filler, which is of great importance in achieving tight bonding between aggregate particles and high
18 12 bonding strength between sleeper and asphalt block. Then the optimal asphalt content was
19
13 determined using Eq. (1):
20
21 14 𝑃𝑏 = 𝑇𝐹 × 𝑆𝐴 (1)
22 15 where TF represents the thickness of asphalt film and was assumed as 9.5 µm in this study [34].
23
24 16 SA represents the specific surface area of aggregates and can be determined using Eq. (2):
25 17 𝑆𝐴 = 10 × (0.41 + 0.0082𝑃2.36 + 0.0164𝑃1.18 + 0.0287𝑃0.6 + 0.06 + 0.1229𝑃0.15 + 0.3277𝑃0.0075 ) (2)
26
27 18 where 𝑃𝑖 represents the passing ratio of aggregate with a typical size.
28 19 To compare the performance difference of EAM with different contents of filler, laboratory
29
30 20 performances of four kinds of EAM with filler contents of 8%, 9%, 10%, and 11%, respectively
31 21 were compared. The optimal asphalt content of the four kinds of EAM were 20.4%, 21.0%, 21.6%,
32 22 and 22.2%, respectively, calculated from Eq. (1) and (2). According to the requirements of bonding
33
34 23 between sleeper and asphalt block, the strength, especially flexural strength (𝑅𝑓 ), compression
35 24 strength (𝑅𝑐 ), and fluidity are the most important properties, thus beam bending test and Lueer
36
25 fluidity test [35] were conducted to evaluate these properties respectively, as shown in Fig. 2.
37
38
39
40
41
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57 (a)
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19 (b)
20
21 1 Figure 2 Properties of EAM with different filler content (a) flexural and compression
22 2 properties, (b) fluidity
23
3 It can be seen that with the increase of filler content, both the compression strength and flexural
24
25 4 strength show a trend of increase, however, the flexural compression ratio 𝑅𝑐 /𝑅𝑓 and fluidity
26 5 shows a trend of first increase then decrease. To make the designed EAM possess enough strength
27
6 as well as sufficient toughness to transform train load to substructures, the 𝑅𝑐 /𝑅𝑓 should be large
28
29 7 enough [36, 37]. Meanwhile, considering that excessive fluidity may lead to segregation and ensure
30 8 workability at the same time, the fluidity was restricted to 3~20 s according to the specifications in
31
32 9 China and Japan [35, 38, 39]. Considering the above two aspects of performance, the final content
33 10 of filler was determined to be 10% in this study.
34
11 The final gradation of EAM was transformed from the gradation of the original epoxy asphalt
35
36 12 mixture used and designed for the asphalt block [8], as depicted in Table 5. When determining the
37 13 final gradation of EAM, the filler added to the fine aggregate part without filler of the original
38
39 14 gradation was first, and then the resulting mixture was distributed according to Table 4 and filler
40 15 content of 10%. The final gradation of EAM was depicted in Table 5 and the final optimal asphalt
41 16 content was determined to be 21.6% through previous calculations.
42
43 17 Table 5 Gradation of epoxy asphalt mixture and EAM
44 Sieve size /mm 26.5 19.0 16.0 13.2 9.5 4.75 <2.36
45
46 Epoxy asphalt mixture 13.4 9.6 8.9 9.7 12.9 18.5 27
47 Sieve size /mm 2.36 1.18 0.6 0.3 0.15 <0.075 Filler
48 EAM 30.8 14.8 14.2 6.8 9.0 14.3 10.0
49
50 18 2.2.2 Sample preparation
51
52 19 Generally, the asphalt block used in asphalt elastic cured track bed can be divided into two types,
53 20 that is, asphalt block using epoxy asphalt and asphalt block using SBS/CR composite modified
54
55 21 asphalt, whose designed method and gradation were introduced in previous studies [8, 33]. To meet
56 22 the requirements of lateral resistance of track structure, among which the track bed offers more than
57 23 65% [21], the bonding strength between the sleeper and asphalt block was investigated using an
58
59 24 interfacial shear test and pull-out test. In this study, two kinds of PCC-asphalt mixture composite
60 25 specimens were prepared. Firstly, a PCC slab with a thickness of 5 cm was molded. Then an asphalt
61
6
62
63
64
65
1 mixture rutting plate with a thickness of 5 cm was prepared. Finally, the PCC slabs and rutting plate
1 2 slabs were bonded using designed EAM and cut into specimens with a size of 5 cm × 5 cm × 7 cm.
2
3 3 The schematic of two kinds of composite specimens and prepared specimens were shown in Fig. 3.
4 4 Besides, it should be noted that for the brevity of description, PCC slabs with SBS/CR composite
5
6
5 modified asphalt mixture were called Type I, while PCC slabs with epoxy asphalt mixture were
7 6 called Type II in lateral sections.
8
9
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17
18
19
20
21 (a) (b)
22 7 Figure 3 (a) Schematic of PCC-asphalt mixture composite specimens (b) specimens
23
24 8 2.2.3 Laboratory tests
25
9 To investigate the bonding properties of a composite structure in depth, an interfacial shear test
26
27 10 and pull-out test were conducted to obtain the shear strength and bonding strength, respectively[40].
28 11 However, before investigating the bonding properties in detail, it is crucial to determine the dosage
29
30 12 of EAM due to insufficient dosage may cause insufficient bonding quality, while excessive dosage
31 13 results in a weak interlayer between sleeper and asphalt block. To determine the optimal dosage of
32 14 EAM, five dosages were investigated through laboratory tests under the temperature 25 °C, namely
33
34 15 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 kg·m-2, based on previous research [9, 33]. Shear strength, bonding strength,
35 16 and fracture energy at normal conditions, water immersion conditions, and freeze-thaw conditions
36
37
17 were investigated separately to determine the optimal dosage of EAM. Since the temperature is the
38 18 main factor influencing the bonding properties, 5 temperature conditions were investigated after the
39 19 optimal dosage of EAM was determined, namely -5, 10, 25, 40, and 55 °C. It is noted that all the
40
41 20 specimens were kept for 4 h for a typical testing temperature while investigating the influence of
42 21 working temperature. Besides, the effects of water immersion and freeze-thaw cycles on the above
43 22 properties were also investigated in this study. During the water immersion test, each specimen was
44
45 23 immersed in water at a temperature of 60 °C for 48 h to simulate the working conditions in hot and
46 24 humid areas. In freeze-thaw cycling, each specimen was first kept in a refrigerator with a
47
48
25 temperature of -18 °C for 16 h, then the specimen was immersed in water at a temperature of 60 °C
49 26 for 24 h. After the freeze-thaw cycle, the specimen was kept for 2 h with a temperature of 25 °C,
50 27 and then an interfacial shear test and pull-out test were conducted. Moreover, it is noted that three
51
52 28 replicate specimens were tested in each test condition, and the average value was chosen as the final
53 29 value to avoid accidental errors.
54 30 The universal testing machine (UTM, UTM-25, IPC Global, CONTROLS, Milan, Italy) was used
55
56 31 to conduct the interfacial shear test. For each testing temperature, each specimen was kept for 4
57 32 hours in the environment box of UTM before testing. The loading rate is 5 mm/min, and the shear
58
59 33 strength can be calculated using Eq. (3):
60
61
7
62
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65
𝐹𝑠
1 1 𝑃𝑠 = × 𝑠𝑖𝑛30° (3)
𝐴
2
3 2 where 𝑃𝑠 represents the shear strength and 𝐹𝑠 represents the peak value of shear force. A
4 3 represents the contact area at the interface and in this study, the value is 2500 mm2. Besides, the
5
6
4 shear stiffness of the interface can be determined using Eq. (4):
7 𝑡0
5 𝐾 = × 103 (4)
8 𝛿0
9
10 6 where K represents the shear or bonding stiffness, 𝑡0 represents the maximum stress during
11 7 loading and 𝛿0 represents the efficient displacement.
12 8 During the pull-out test, a multi-functional pulling and pressing tester was applied in this study
13
14 9 and the loading value was set to 10 mm/min, thus the bonding strength can be obtained by Eq. (5):
15 𝐹𝑏
16 10 𝑃𝑏 = (5)
17 𝐴
18 11 where 𝑃𝑏 represents the bonding strength and 𝐹𝑏 is the peak value during the pull-out test.
19 12 Moreover, based on the load-displacement curve of the interfacial shear test and pull-out test, the
20
21 13 fracture energy of the shear test and pull-out test can be obtained, which is similar to the fracture
22 14 energy of the semi-circular bending (SCB) test. The detailed analysis methods were introduced
23
15 elsewhere [10] and only calculation results of fracture energy were detailed in this study.
24
25
26 16 3 Evaluation of bonding properties
27
28 17 3.1 Determination of EAM dosage
29 18 Generally, the bonding qualities of bituminous materials under normal conditions (25 °C, without
30 19 water immersion or freeze-that cycling) are much better than after water immersion or freeze-thaw
31
32 20 cycling. In this section, bonding strength, bonding stiffness, and fracture energy with different EAM
33 21 dosages were discussed respectively, as shown in Fig. 4, and the optimal EAM dosage was
34
22 determined through these three parameters. It can be seen from the figure that with the increase of
35
36 23 EAM dosage, all these three parameters show a trend of first increase then decrease and reach the
37 24 peak when the EAM dosage is 17 kg·m-2, thus the final dosage of EAM was determined as 17 kg·m-
38 2 to achieve good bonding qualities. Such results are due to the change of bonding conditions
39 25
40 26 between the sleeper and asphalt block. When the dosage of EAM is relatively small, the contact
41 27 surface of the composite specimen can’t be in complete contact with the EAM, and thus can’t
42
43 28 provide enough bonding strength and bonding stiffness. Meanwhile, under these conditions, there
44 29 are many microcracks and unconnected areas between the sleeper and asphalt block, resulting in
45
30 earlier cracking at the interface, thus the fracture energies are relatively low. With the increase of
46
47 31 EAM dosage, these unconnected regions are filled with extra EAM and the bonding quality between
48 32 sleeper and asphalt block thus increases. However, with the continued increase of EAM dosage, the
49
50 33 thickness of the bonding layer between the sleeper and asphalt block also increases, thus a weak
51 34 sandwich layer occurs in this region. When the thickness of the weak layer is too large, unwanted
52 35 damage will occur in this region, thus causing a decrease in these three parameters.
53
54 36 Additionally, it also can be concluded from the figure that, the shear strength and bonding strength
55 37 of Type II is larger than Type I. The same rule exists in the difference between shear fracture energy
56
38 and bonding fracture energy, as well as the shear stiffness, of Type II and Type I, indicating that the
57
58 39 bonding qualities between EAM and SBS/CR composite modified asphalt mixture are much lower
59 40 than that between EAM and epoxy asphalt mixture. This is mainly due to the strength differences
60
61
8
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65
1 between substructures, those are differences between SBS/CR composite modified asphalt block
1 2 and epoxy asphalt block. In the composition of SBS/CR composite modified asphalt block, due to
2
3 3 the presence of dry-process crumb rubber, the overall adhesion decreases [8, 9], resulting in a
4 4 significant gap of bonding qualities between Type I and Type II. That is to say, the bonding
5
6
5 parameters of Type I are the strength parameters of the SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture
7 6 rather than EAM. However, this results further depicts that the designed EAM has a strong bonding
8 7 ability and is reasonable for bonding PCC sleeper and asphalt blocks.
9
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(c)
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58 8 Figure 4 Effect of EAM dosage on (a) Strength, (b) Stiffness, and (c) Fracture energy (Normal
59 9 condition)
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9
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1 3.2 Water effect
1 2 Based on Fig. 1(a) and Ref. [1], the sleeper was embedded into the preset groove of the asphalt
2
3 3 block, meaning that the water and other unwanted contaminants will accumulate in the locations of
4 4 microdamage of the groove. Under the influence of water, the bonding qualities decrease apparently
5
6
5 during long-term working. Similarly, under the influence of climate change, the bonding qualities
7 6 also decrease due to the deterioration of the bonding interface. This section investigated the
8 7 deterioration of bonding qualities using specimens after water immersion and freeze-thaw cycling,
9
10 8 as shown in Fig. 5. To describe the deterioration quantitatively, the residual intensity ratio of
11 9 different parameters can be determined using Eq. (6):
12 𝜎
13 10 𝑇 = ( ) × 100% (6)
14 𝜎0
15 11 where T represents the residual intensity ratio, 𝜎 represents the parameter after water immersion
16
17 12 or freeze-thaw cycling and 𝜎0 represents the parameter after water immersion or freeze-thaw
18 13 cycling.
19 14 It can be concluded that the bonding quality of Type II is better than that of Type I under any test
20
21 15 conditions, indicating that Type II has better long-term working performance than Type I. This also
22 16 can be attributed to the presence of dry-process crumb rubber and the adhesion at the interface is
23
17 relatively worse. Additionally, under the long-term effect of water and temperature, the adhesion
24
25 18 between crumb rubber and asphalt mixture will deteriorate faster than that between epoxy resin and
26 19 asphalt mixture under the influence of water and climate change. In terms of the magnitude of
27
28 20 change in these parameters, the strength residual intensity ratios of type I are 87.5% and 75.8%,
29 21 respectively, after water immersion and freeze-thaw cycling. However, these values are 90.2% and
30 22 77.4%, respectively for Type II. This further illustrates that the adhesion quality of Type II is better
31
32 23 than that of Type I and the bonding performance of Type II deteriorates slower than that of Type I
33 24 during long-term service due to the better adhesion between epoxy resin and asphalt mixture.
34
25 Moreover, it also can be concluded that the residual intensity ratio after water immersion is larger
35
36 26 than that after freeze-thaw cycling, indicating that during long-term service the water has a worse
37 27 influence on the bonding behavior of composite structure. This is because during the process of
38
39 28 long-term service, bonding quality deterioration caused by the intrusion of water is much more
40 29 severe than that caused by climate change. This is because the intrusion of water causes the bond
41 30 between the aggregate and the asphalt to be greatly reduced, whereas the temperature change only
42
43 31 weakens the material and does not change much in terms of bonding properties.
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36 (c)
37 1 Figure 5 Effect of water on (a) Strength, (b) Stiffness, and (c) Fracture energy (17 kg·m-2)
38
39 2 3.3 Temperature effect
40 3 Considering that the designed EAM and components of asphalt block, those are, epoxy asphalt
41 4 mixture and SBS/CR composite modified asphalt mixture, are all viscoelastic materials, whose
42
43 5 mechanical properties are largely influenced by temperature, and the designed asphalt elastic cured
44 6 track bed will be constructed in the region with different climate characteristics, especially
45
7 temperatures, it is crucial to investigate the bonding behavior under different temperature conditions,
46
47 8 as shown in Fig. 6. Generally, with the increase of temperature, all the bonding related parameters
48 9 shown a trend of decrease in index. This trend is similar to the change in modulus of a typical
49
50 10 viscoelastic material at elevated temperatures, indicating that bonding properties are still to some
51 11 extent related to the viscoelastic properties. As a viscoelastic material, the asphalt softens and the
52 12 fluidity increases when the temperature is high, resulting in a decrease of modulus and bonding
53
54 13 qualities. On the contrary, when the temperature is low, the asphalt becomes brittle and hard, and
55 14 the modulus and bonding qualities increase at the same time. Additionally, due to the presence of
56
15 crumb rubber, the bonding qualities of Type I are worse than Type II. When the temperature is
57
58 16 relatively low (10 and -5 °C), there is an apparent gap between the two types. This is because the
59 17 asphalt becomes brittle and its viscosity deteriorates, resulting in the adhesion between crumb
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11
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1 rubber and asphalt mixture decreasing significantly, however, such a phenomenon doesn’t exist in
1 2 the system of epoxy asphalt mixture, whose low-temperature performance is much better than
2
3 3 SBS/CR composite modified asphalt mixture. However, when the temperature becomes higher, the
4 4 asphalt mixture softens, resulting in a decrease in bonding qualities, and the differences between
5
6
5 Type I and Type II thus fade. This also indicates that the decreasing speed of Type II is much higher
7 6 than that of Type I, meaning that the bonding qualities between EAM and epoxy asphalt mixture
8 7 deteriorate faster than that between EAM and SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture.
9
10 8 Based on the results, although in most conditions the bonding qualities of Type II are superior to
11 9 those of Type I, application of Type II in regions with frequent or large temperature variations should
12 10 be avoided. This is because compared with the SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture, the
13
14 11 epoxy asphalt mixture is more brittle and its deformation resistance is relatively lower [6, 41].
15 12 Consequently, when applying Type II to regions with frequent or large variations of temperature,
16
17 13 the accumulative temperature stress inside the asphalt mixture has a more extensive influence on
18 14 the epoxy asphalt mixture compared with the SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture. As a
19 15 result, Type II is more likely to destroy under these conditions. Moreover, when the temperature is
20
21 16 higher than 40 °C, the differences among bonding parameters are not significant. So if the
22 17 requirements of construction are not quite strict, applying Type I to obtain a better deformation
23
18 resistance of the whole track structure is also acceptable. However, the bonding qualities of Type II
24
25 19 are much better than that of Type I, and in most working conditions, Type II was recommended and
26 20 Type I is only recommended in some typical conditions.
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43 (c)
44 1 Figure 6 Effect of temperature on (a) Strength, (b) Stiffness, and (c) Fracture energy
45
46
2 3.4 Statistical interpretation
47 3 To depict the accuracy of data obtained from laboratory tests as well as the significance of the
48 4 influence of dosage, water, and temperature on bonding performance, statistical analysis was
49
50 5 conducted in this section, as shown in Table 6. For brevity, only the dosage influence of bonding
51 6 strength I, water influence of shear stiffness II, and temperature influence of shear bonding energy
52 7 II were detailed in the table. Statistical analysis of other parameters showed similar results. Besides,
53
54 8 all the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients are larger than 0.9, which means that all obtained experiment
55 9 data is reliable. All three kinds of influence factors have significant influences on the bonding
56
10 qualities between sleeper and asphalt blocks, indicating that it is crucial to determine the EAM
57
58 11 dosage as well as the working conditions of the composite structure before applying it to
59 12 construction.
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1 Table 6 One-way ANOVA results for bonding quality-related parameters
1
2 Dependent variables Sum of square df Mean square F-value p-value Sig.
4 Bonding
5 Within groups 0.001 10 0.000
Strength I
6 Total 0.131 14
7 59276.482 87.540 9.672E-8 Yes
Between groups 237105.928 4
8 Shear
9 Within groups 6771.383 10 677.138
stiffness II
10 Total 243877.311 14
11
12 Shear Between groups 341614.851 4 85403.713 711.537 3.147E-12 Yes
13 bonding Within groups 1200.272 10 120.027
14 energy II
15 Total 342815.123 14
16
17 2 4 Mechanical behavior of sleeper-asphalt block composite structure
18
19 3 The previous sections mainly focus on the bonding properties between sleeper and asphalt block
20 4 under different working conditions using laboratory tests and Type II was recommended in most
21
5 working conditions. However, due to the limitation of molding real-size sleeper-asphalt block
22
23 6 composite structures in the door and difficulties in researching the mechanical behavior of
24 7 composite structures during construction, only small-size specimens were investigated in detail in
25
26 8 previous sections. To deeply understand the long-term deformation behavior and mechanical
27 9 behavior of composite structures during construction, an FE model considering the bonding
28 10 properties was established and validated in this section, hoping to provide a reliable reference for
29
30 11 asphalt elastic cured track construction and maintenance.
31 12 4.1 FE model for sleeper-asphalt block composite structure
32
13 The basic size of the sleeper-asphalt block composite structure was determined in previous
33
34 14 research [1, 6] and the same size was chosen in this section, as shown in Fig. 7(a). In this section,
35 15 performance under two kinds of working conditions was investigated, those are long-term
36
37 16 deformation conditions and lifting conditions. During the long-term deformation analysis, the
38 17 composite structure was applied with train load for 5 million and 3 million times, respectively during
39 18 the validation process and performance calculation process, as shown in the left figure of Fig. 7(a).
40
41 19 During the lifting analysis, the lifting load was applied to the bottom of the sleeper, as shown in the
42 20 right figure of Fig. 7(a). To make the structure move at a typical speed during lifting, a moving
43
21 boundary with a certain speed was applied to approach the lifting load. To ensure sufficient
44
45 22 computational efficiency, the mesh size of the sleeper and asphalt block was determined as 0.1 m,
46 23 and the solid element (C3D8R) was applied. Since the asphalt mixture is a viscoelastic material, a
47
48 24 generalized Maxwell model and Prony series were applied to simulate its viscoelastic behavior.
49 25 Based on Ref. [1, 8], the coefficients of the Prony series were detailed in Table 7, and other material
50 26 parameters were listed in Table 8.
51
52 27 Table 7 Coefficients of Prony series
53 Relaxation time /s 0.00001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 10 100 1000 10000 100000
54
Type I 0.0254 0.0174 0.0583 0.1153 0.1980 0.2528 0.1732 0.0753 0.0321 0.0111 0.0058
55 Prony series
56 Type II 0.0950 0.2493 0.2278 0.2167 0.0736 0.0518 0.0143 0.0193 0.0139 0.0135 0.0203
57 28
58
59 29 Table 8 Material properties of composite structure [6]
60 Young’s modulus /MPa Poisson’s ratio Density /(kg·m-3)
61
14
62
63
64
65
Sleeper 35000 0.2 2800
1
Type I - 0.3 2400
2
3 Type II - 0.3 2040
4 1 To describe the mechanical behavior of the sleeper-asphalt block interface accurately, defining
5
6 2 the damage behavior of this interface is of great importance. Generally, there are two ways of
7 3 simulating the damage at the interface, namely, cohesive element and cohesive contact. The former
8 4 was usually applied to interface with irrespective of thickness or bulk materials, such as the internal
9
10 5 cracking of asphalt mixture [42]. The latter is mainly used for interfaces with smaller or negligible
11 6 thicknesses, such as bonding between two structures. In this study, the cohesive contact method was
12
7 applied to simulate the contact between sleeper and asphalt block for the thickness of bonding EAM
13
14 8 is negligible (usually less than 3 mm) compared with the thickness of sleeper and asphalt block, as
15 9 shown in Fig. 7(b). In such a contact method, the thickness of the contact area was assumed to be
16
17 10 zero and the damage parameter CSMAXSCRT (C value) was applied to reflect the contact state of
18 11 the sleeper and asphalt block. The C value of 0 means that the two surfaces are in complete contact
19 12 and the C value of 1 means that the two surfaces are completely separated. In the interval from 0 to
20
21 13 1, the larger the C value indicates the more serious the degree of interface damage, and the worse
22 14 the contact state between the sleeper and asphalt block. When defining the cohesive contact, it is
23
24
15 also necessary to define the key parameters of damage, which depend on the selected damage law.
25 16 In this study, the bilinear model was applied to simulate the evolution of bonding behavior, as shown
26 17 in Fig. 7(c) [42]. Where 𝑡𝑐 represents the bonding strength, 𝛿0 is the corresponding displacement
27
28 18 and 𝛿𝑓 is the displacement when the interface was totally damaged. In the applied FE software
29 19 ABAQUS, 𝛿0 and 𝛿𝑓 can be calculated using bonding stiffness K and fracture energy G, which
30 20 were obtained through laboratory tests and were discussed in previous sections. Table 9 details the
31
32 21 used bonding parameters under normal conditions (25 °C, without water immersion or freeze-thaw
33 22 cycling) and other conditions that have relatively the same setting methods. After that, the principle
34
35
23 of maximum nominal principal stress was selected as the beginning of damage, meaning that when
36 24 the maximum principal stress at the interface is larger than the set value, the damage will begin to
37 25 evolve [43, 44].
38
39 26 Table 9 Bonding parameters under normal conditions
40 Parameter 𝒕𝒄 /MPa K /(MPa·m-1) G /(J·m-2)
41
42
Normal direction 0.57 356.3 285.0
43 Type I First tangent direction 2.4 1090.9 1650.0
45
46 Normal direction 0.88 352.0 687.5
47 Type II First tangent direction 3.89 1295.3 3650.7
49
50 27
51
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54
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59
(a) (b)
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12 (c)
13
14 1 Figure 7 Schematic of (a) FE model, (b) cohesive contact, and (c) bilinear model
15 2 The established model was validated via similar research conducted on polyurethane track and
16
17 3 Type I, as shown in Fig. 8(a) and Fig. 8(b), respectively. During validating via polyurethane track,
18 4 the long-term deformation characteristics were investigated in detail. The whole loading procedure
19 5 was divided into three parts and the maximum loads were 110, 130, and 150 kN, respectively.
20
21 6 During each procedure, the ratio of different loading times was 63:147:46 and the material
22 7 parameters were referred from Ref. [45], and the reasonability of applying Maxwell model to
23
8 describe the viscoelastic properties of polyurethane has also been validate in this reference. On the
24
25 9 other hand, in the validation via Type I, a small-scale FE model was established aiming to validate
26 10 the reasonability of the cohesive contact approach, and the load-displacement curve was selected as
27
28 11 the validation curve. As shown in Fig. 8, the simulated and measured values in both validation
29 12 methods show good agreement, and the model can be seen as reasonable in further investigations.
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21 (b)
22 1 Figure 8 Model validation via (a) sleeper-polyurethane block, (b) Type I
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2 The bonding performance of sleeper-asphalt block composite structure deteriorates during the
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25 3 long-term service, which is manifested by increasing accumulative deformation and accumulative
26 4 C value, however, these two parameters are hard to investigate using laboratory tests. Based on the
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28 5 loading methods in previous research [6], the calculation results of accumulative deformation and
29 6 accumulative C value of Type I and Type II under 3 million times loading were shown in Fig. 9. It
30 7 can be seen from the Fig. 9(a) that the accumulative deformations of both two types show a trend
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32 8 of significant increase during the first one million loading, after that, the accumulative deformation
33 9 increases much slower than before during the process of next 4 million times loading, however,
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10 never stopped. As a kind of viscoelastic material, asphalt mixture deforms after each load is applied
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36 11 and the deformation can be divided into two parts, namely, recoverable deformation and
37 12 unrecoverable deformation. When irrecoverable deformation exists, the next load will produce less
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39 13 stress in the structure than the previous one, resulting in less deformation. This smaller deformation
40 14 can also be categorized into recoverable and unrecoverable deformation, and the unrecoverable
41 15 deformation will be accumulated inside the structure, and the accumulated deformation curve shown
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43 16 in Fig. 9(a) will be obtained after several cycles of loading.
44 17 Moreover, Fig. 9(a) also shows that the long-term deformation of Type II is much smaller than
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18 Type I, meaning that Type II has better long-term performance, however, the bonding performance
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47 19 can’t be concluded through this figure simply. This is because the composite structure is composed
48 20 of three parts, those are, PCC sleeper, EAM layer, and asphalt mixture layer. Since the PCC sleeper
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50 21 can be seen as an elastic material, meaning that the deformation of the structure recovers after each
51 22 loading and there will not be accumulative deformation inside the PCC layer. Besides, the thickness
52 23 of the EAM layer can be ignored compared with the thickness of the other two layers. Consequently,
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54 24 the long-term deformation of the whole composite structure mainly exists in the asphalt mixture
55 25 layer..
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26 During the loading process, the long-term deformation is mainly due to the further compacting
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58 27 of the asphalt mixture skeleton and the flow of asphalt binder. Since the two types are applied with
59 28 the same gradation, meaning that the difference between the two types’ long-term deformation does
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1 not result from further compacting of the skeleton. In fact, the main reason for this difference can
1 2 be attributed to the difference in composition of the two kinds of asphalt mixture. Firstly, the
2
3 3 presence of dry-process crumb rubber does not react with the asphalt binder and plays a part in the
4 4 asphalt mixture skeleton [8, 46, 47]. However, the bonding quality between crumb rubber and
5
6
5 asphalt binder was not as good as that between aggregate and asphalt binder, resulting in rubber
7 6 particles sliding between the skeleton. These slides are irreversible in the long run, thus a larger
8 7 accumulative deformation in Type I is observed compared with Type II. Secondly, the epoxy asphalt
9
10 8 mixture is applied in Type II, which is a much more stable asphalt mixture compared with the
11 9 SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt mixture applied in Type I. This is because there is a stable
12 10 cross-linked structure after the epoxy resin is cured [48, 49] and this curing process is also
13
14 11 irreversible. The cross-linked structure enables the asphalt mixture a hard material with excellent
15 12 deformation resistance, thus in the long run, the accumulative deformation of Type II is less than
16
17 13 that of Type I. To evaluate the bonding performance during long-term service of the two types in
18 14 depth, the accumulative C value was calculated and was shown in Fig. 9(b). It can be seen that
19 15 during the first one million loadings, the accumulative C values of the two types increase
20
21 16 significantly, corresponding to the accumulation of deformation. Also in this process, the
22 17 accumulative C value of Type I is slightly smaller than that of Type II, which can be attributed to
23
18 the better deformation ability of CR in SBS/CR composite-modified asphalt. During the long-term
24
25 19 service process, the accumulative C value of Type II increases at a pretty slow speed, however, in
26 20 sharp contrast, the accumulative C value of Type I still increases at an apparent speed, which is due
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28 21 to the better fatigue properties of epoxy asphalt mixture [6]. Based on the discussions above, Type
29 22 II was recommended in track constructions in most conditions for its smaller accumulative
30 23 deformation and better long-term bonding performance.
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22 1 Figure 9 Life-time (a) accumulative deformation, (b) accumulative C value
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2 4.2 Lifting analysis
25 3 Since the subject of this study is a prefabricated sleeper-asphalt block composite structure, this is
26 4 a type of structure that needs to be prefabricated and molded in the factory and transported to the
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28 5 construction site for installation, thus lifting is inevitable during construction. This section mainly
29 6 investigated the bonding performance of the composite structure during both static lifting and
30 7 dynamic lifting processes, aiming to provide a reliable reference for practical construction. During
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32 8 the lifting process, the slings were installed under the sleeper, as shown in Fig. 1(a) and in the FE
33 9 model, the slings were simplified as moving boundaries, as shown in Fig. 7(a). During the static
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10 lifting analysis, only the global gravity was applied to the model and the speeds of moving
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36 11 boundaries were set as 0 m/s. During the dynamic lifting analysis, apart from the added global
37 12 gravity, the speeds of moving boundaries were set as 0.3, 0.6, 0.9, 1.2, and 1.5 m/s, respectively.
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39 13 Besides, five different working conditions, namely, normal conditions, high temperature, low
40 14 temperature, water immersion, and freeze-thaw conditions, and the bonding parameters were
41 15 collected from previous laboratory tests.
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43 16 The C value contours of Type I under static lifting conditions and dynamic lifting with a lifting
44 17 speed of 0.9 m/s were selected as the example for analysis and were shown in Fig. 10(a) and Fig.
45
18 10(b), respectively. During the process of static lifting, it can be seen that the maximum value of C
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47 19 value exists in the middle of the contact surface, however, the value of maximum C value is less
48 20 than 0.01, meaning that the damage at the contact surface is small and the sleeper-asphalt block
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50 21 composite structure is in good bonding condition. As for dynamic lifting, the distribution of the C
51 22 value is different from that of static lifting, as shown in Fig. 10(b). The maximum value of C value
52 23 exists on the side of the contact surface, meaning t that microcracks are more likely to develop
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54 24 around the side of the combined structure during dynamic lifting. Besides, the maximum value of
55 25 C value is larger than 0.3 during dynamic lifting, meaning that bonding properties of bonding begin
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26 to deteriorate and larger speed may lead to unwanted damage to the structure, thus it is crucial to
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58 27 investigate the maximum value of C value with different lifting speed to avoid unwanted damage.
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36 1 Figure 10 Contour of C value during (a) static lifting and (b) dynamic lifting (Type I, 0.9 m/s)
37 2 As shown in Fig. 11, the C values of the two types under different working conditions with
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39 3 different lifting speeds were shown in detail. Each color block in the figure indicates the increment
40 4 corresponding to the C value when the speed increases by 0.3 m/s. It can be seen that the C value
41 5 of Type I is larger than Type II at the same working conditions, which has been discussed in previous
42
43 6 sections. Besides, from the increment block, it is apparent that each increment of Type I is larger
44 7 than Type II, meaning that the bonding quality of Type I deteriorates faster than Type II, which may
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8 be due to the presence of CR deteriorated the stability of asphalt block, resulting in earlier damage
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47 9 to the contact surface. Particularly, for Type I under the high-temperature condition with a lifting
48 10 speed of 1.2 m/s, the C value reaches 1, meaning that some regions of the contact area have failed
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50 11 under this condition and the destruction of the composite structure has begun. In contrast, the C
51 12 value of Type II is less than 0.8 under any conditions, which indicates that the bonding quality of
52 13 Type II is reasonable at any time and is ready for construction. However, considering. Considering
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54 14 many other influencing factors during the construction process, the C value during lifting should
55 15 still not be too large, so the recommended lifting speed used in this study is 0.9 m/s.
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1 Figure 11 Effect of lifting speed on C values (a) Type I, (b) Type II
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47 2 Apart from the C value, other lifting-related parameters were also calculated in this study, namely
48 3 lateral stress and tensile stress, aiming to reflect the bonding condition during lifting in depth. Fig.
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50 4 12(a) and Fig. 12(b) show the comparison between static lifting parameters of Type I and Type II as
51 5 well as dynamic lifting parameters, respectively. Interestingly, the lateral stress of Type I is larger
52 6 than that of Type II under normal conditions, however, smaller than that of Type II under other
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54 7 conditions. From the data perspective, the values of tensile stress of Type II under any conditions
55 8 are nearly the same during static lifting, while those of Type I decrease, indicating that the bonding
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9 quality of Type II stays the same under these conditions and that of Type I deteriorates to some
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58 10 extent. As for lateral stress, the differences among different working conditions or different types
59 11 are small, however, the lateral stresses of Type I are still smaller than that of Type II, which further
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1 illustrates that Type I deteriorates more than Type II during working. Similarly, the analysis of the
1 2 C-values shows the same results, which will not be repeated here. As for the dynamic lifting process,
2
3 3 the same results also exist, however, the differences between Type I and Type II are smaller
4 4 compared with the static lifting process. Meanwhile, most values during the dynamic lifting process
5
6
5 are smaller than during the static lifting process, indicating whether the bonding quality of Type I
7 6 or Type II shows some degree of deterioration. Additionally, it should be noted that the C value of
8 7 Type I under high-temperature conditions is much higher than any other working conditions,
9
10 8 indicating that Type I is unstable at high-temperature conditions when the lifting speed is 0.9 m/s,
11 9 which can be attributed to worse high-temperature performance of SBS/CR modified asphalt
12 10 mixture compared with epoxy asphalt mixture. Moreover, it also can be seen that the C value of
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14 11 Type II under freeze-thaw conditions is higher than that of Type I, which may be due to low
15 12 temperatures making the epoxy asphalt mixture more brittle than the SBS/CR modified asphalt
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17 13 mixture. Despite this, the value of C value is still within the acceptable limits.
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28 1 Figure 12 Comparison among (a) static lifting parameters, (b) dynamic lifting parameters of
29 2 Type I and Type II
30 3 Furthermore, the differences between the static lifting process and dynamic lifting process were
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32 4 also investigated in detail, as shown in Fig. 13, where D, S, A, and B represent dynamic lifting, and
33 5 static lifting, after working and before working, respectively. Fig. 13(a) compares the differences
34
6 between static lifting parameters and dynamic parameters and Type I was selected as the example.
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36 7 Fig. 13(b) compares the differences among dynamic lifting parameters before and after working and
37 8 Type II was selected as the example. It should be noted that the after working means the asphalt
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39 9 block after 3 million times loading and the main aim of doing this analysis is to evaluate the bonding
40 10 performance of sleeper-asphalt block composite structure during replacing in the later maintenance
41 11 process. Generally, the lifting parameters during dynamic lifting are larger than during static lifting
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43 12 due to the larger load during the dynamic lifting process. Additionally, during the dynamic lifting
44 13 process, stresses at all five working conditions are relatively the same, indicating that the damages
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14 caused by different working conditions are smaller than those caused by lifting load, thus it is crucial
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47 15 to choose the proper lifting speed. Meanwhile, the C values at different conditions also show that
48 16 compared with dynamic lifting, damages caused by static lifting are nearly negligible and the C
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50 17 values at high temperatures and freeze-thaw cycling are much larger than in other conditions,
51 18 meaning that it is necessary to control working conditions and lifting speed during construction.
52 19 Compared with the difference between static lifting parameters and dynamic lifting parameters,
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54 20 the differences between dynamic lifting parameters before and after working are much smaller.
55 21 From the perspective of stress, the differences are not obvious, which further indicates that during
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22 the long-term working, Type II kept its bonding quality and damages did not accumulate much
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58 23 inside the structure and the main damage during lifting was caused by dynamic lifting load.
59 24 Additionally, analysis of the C value also indicates that there is only a slight difference between
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1 before and after long-term service, which further validated the stability of Type II. Based on the
1 2 analysis above, Type II is recommended as the ideal structure, whether for complex working
2
3 3 conditions, long-term service, or dynamic lifting.
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59 4 Figure 13 Comparison among (a) static lifting parameters and dynamic lifting parameters
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1 (Type I), (b) dynamic lifting parameters before and after working (Type II)
1
2 2 5 Summary and conclusions
3
4 3 To improve the bonding performance between the sleeper and asphalt block in asphalt elastic
5
6
4 cured track bed in-depth, a novel kind of EAM was designed through strength and fluidity test. After
7 5 that, the bonding quality between the sleeper and two kinds of asphalt block under different working
8 6 conditions using the designed EAM was evaluated through an interfacial shear test and pull-out test.
9
10 7 Considering that there are difficulties in investigating the long-term performance and lifting
11 8 performance using laboratory tests, an FE model of sleeper-asphalt block composite structure using
12 9 a cohesive contact approach was established and validated. The bonding qualities of sleeper-asphalt
13
14 10 block composite structure in the process of long-term service, under different working conditions,
15 11 during static lifting and dynamic lifting processes were investigated using the FE model in detail.
16
17 12 The main findings and conclusions are given as follows:
18 13 i. The specially designed EAM has excellent bonding qualities and the optimal dosage of EAM
19 14 was determined as 17 kg·m-2 through comprehensive analysis.
20
21 15 ii. Type II has better bonding qualities than Type I in most conditions, including normal
22 16 conditions, water immersion, freeze-thaw cycling, and different temperature conditions
23
17 through analysis of bonding strength, bonding stiffness, and fracture energy.
24
25 18 iii. With the increase in temperature, the bonding-related parameters show a trend of decreasing
26 19 exponentially and reaching the same level when the temperature is relatively high. At this
27
28 20 condition, the differences in bonding qualities among different types no longer exist.
29 21 iv. During long-term service, the accumulative deformation of Type II is smaller than that of
30 22 Type I as well as the accumulative C value, meaning that Type II has better bonding qualities
31
32 23 in the long run. Moreover, bonding qualities under different working conditions show the
33 24 same trend.
34
25 v. The bonding parameters during the static lifting process are much smaller than during the
35
36 26 dynamic lifting process, which is nearly negligible. Considering the C value should not be
37 27 too large, the recommended lifting speed was selected as 0.9 m/s.
38
39 28 However, only the bonding quality was evaluated and investigated in this study and the research
40 29 on the evolution of damage at the interface was lacking as well as the intrinsic rules. Besides, other
41 30 phenomena at the interface such as cracking initiation and propagation need to be investigated in
42
43 31 detail. Future studies will be conducted on the damage initiation and evolution at the interface using
44 32 advanced monitoring methods. A more accurate FE model reflecting the evolution of bonding
45
33 conditions at the interface needs to be established.
46
47
48 34 Declaration of competing interest
49
50 35 The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal
51 36 relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
52
53 37 Acknowledgment
54
55 38 The authors acknowledge the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of
56
39 China (No. 52078130), Technology Research and Development Program of China State Railway
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58 40 Group Co., Ltd (No. P2019G030).
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Construction and Building Materials

Interlayer bonding quality evaluation of sleeper-asphalt block composite structure

Manuscript Number: CONBUILDMAT-D-23-07879R1

Article Type: Research Paper

1 1 Interlayer bonding quality evaluation of sleeper-

Thank you and best regards.

Please find attached a revised version of our manuscript.

We shall look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

qualities are introduced in responses to the 3rd review.

1 1 Interlayer bonding quality evaluation of sleeper-

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