Experimental Investigation of Pothole Repair Materials

Pothole repairs represent a major maintenance item in the budget of many highway agencies. Currently, there are no required specifications for patching materials. Although the appearance of potholes every spring is a major public relations concern, limited experimental work has been performed on pothole repair materials to evaluate their mechanical properties. The focus of this study is to investigate relevant mechanical properties of current pothole materials. A total of six materials consisting of both summer and winter mixtures were used in this study. Several issues were encountered during the sample preparation of cold mixtures, such as the need of significant curing to gain strength and stiffness at low temperatures. For the cold mixtures, only Indirect Tensile creep and strength testing were performed, while for the other mixtures fracture energy and toughness were also determined. Experiments were also performed to evaluate if the addition of graphene nano-platelets (GNP) to patching materials improve their properties. Based on the results, several recommendations were made to improve the durability of pothole repair materials.