In situ evaluation of modern methods for pavement layers density determination

Density is the best criterion in pavements quality control. Determination of asphalt mixture density while compaction and after that is an important issue from two aspects of compaction level measurement and the time of compaction process termination. The most common and accurate method of in situ density determination is core making. Common procedure is to use a core gear and performing density test on cores in laboratory. Being expensive، time consuming and unrepeatable test، besides causing pavement deterioration are disadvantages of core making. Time consuming causes layer weakness doesn’t discover soon enough to do some modifications on that. Nondestructive density tests became very popular in recent years. These tests don’t cause any deterioration on pavement surface and are more reach than core making and repeatable since are NDT which are divided to nuclear and non nuclear NDT tests. PQI 301 electromagnetic and Troxler (HS-5001EZ) nuclear devices field evaluation were done in this research. After statistical analysis it was resulted that PQI is convenience for asphalt layers and nuclear is convenience for granular layers.