ABSTRACT
In recent years, many researches were done to improve service life of asphalt pavement against vehicles dynamic loads. For this purpose, researchers investigated different ways such as changing the aggregate gradation and using of additive material to modify bitumen and asphalt mixtures. One of this ways is using of additive materials to improve asphalt properties against dynamic loads. Due to unique characteristics of nano materials, using of them in asphalt mixtures has been interested. Therefore, in this study the effect of nano zinc oxide (ZnO) in improvement of mechanical properties of hot mix asphalt (HMA) has been investigated. To achieve this goal, mixtures with different content of bitumen and nano zinc oxide were made and the effects of these parameters were investigated on the modified mixtures in comparison to conventional asphalt mixtures. With the experimental results and the numerical analysis with Matlab Software, two experimental models were proposed for prediction of the creep behavior of both conventional and modified asphalt mixtures by nano ZnO for different conditions depending on temperature and stress. The results showed that adding of nano zinc oxide to HMA had a great effect in the improvement of permanent deformation of HMA.
