Automating WMA Construction Planning: A Physics-aware Framework

The Dutch road construction industry is transitioning from hot mix asphalt (HMA) to more eco-friendly warm mix asphalt (WMA). While WMA offers clear environmental benefits, its distinct material properties, particularly the compactability, demand different construction practices. However, limited industry knowledge hinders WMA construction planning, driving the need for automated tools for more efficient WMA construction strategic planning. This research proposed a physics-aware surrogate modelling framework to improve strategy evaluation and optimization, and enable the automative exploration of optimal construction strategies. A preliminary feasibility study demonstrated the possibility of developing a surrogate model using Random Forest to efficiently capture the temperature-dependent compactability of a WMA mixture. The industrial adoption and potential advancement of this tool, including the integration with other sensing technologies and automatic construction, to ensure high-quality pavement construction were also discussed.