Evaluation of Fiber Distribution in Steel Fiber Reinforced Asphalt Concrete based on CT Image Analysis

Abstract

The premise of steel fiber reinforced asphalt concrete (FRAC) to exhibit multifunctional applications is that fibers are uniformly dispersed in the asphalt mixtures. In this paper, image analysis method was applied to evaluate the fiber distribution in different asphalt mixture samples. X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanner was adopted to capture the images and image processing software (Image-Pro Plus) was assisted to accomplish the following analysis. The distribution coefficient was introduced to evaluate quantitatively distribution of the steel fibers (SFs), the higher value of distribution coefficient, and the more uniform distribution the SFs. Asphalt mixtures with 4% SFs showed better fiber distribution than that with 10% SFs. The distribution coefficient of samples with 10% SFs were 0.7427 and 0.7861, while distribution coefficient of samples with 4% SFs were all over 0.8, which indicates asphalt mixture incorporated with less amount of fiber can obtain more uniform distributed fibers.