Considerations On The Analysis Of Permanent Deformation In The New Brazilian Asphalt Pavement Design Method

The motivation for this study comes from the technical-scientific advance, which has increased the theoretical bases of the design of pavements over time and, mainly, because the new Brazilian pavement design method (MeDiNa) proposes the use of the Flow Number from uniaxial repeated load test to verify mechanical properties of the asphalt mixture as sufficient to eliminate other tests related to permanent deformation of the asphalt layer. This paper is a literature review with a collection of studies about the design of asphalt mixtures, results of large-scale paving tests, and the evolution of pavement design methods, regarding the understanding of permanent deformation in the asphalt layer. The information collected indicates that the Flow Number is a good (“it is necessary”) parameter for evaluating the behavior of an asphalt mixture regarding permanent deformation, but, for a better evaluation in MeDiNa, it is necessary to carry out other tests (“it is not sufficient”), including large-scale and long-term evaluation tests.