The effect of reinforcement on pavement tensile strength

This paper suggests a formal statistical test of hypothesis to determine the effect of asphalt reinforcement. Four types of asphalt reinforcement are used. These are: fiberglass grid, polypropylene grid, textile fabric, and composite of fiberglass grid and textile fabric. Only the polypropylene reinforced asphalt has a higher tensile strength than that of the unreinforced asphalt at 0.05 level of significant. The tensile strengths of the other three types of reinforcement are not significantly different from that of the unreinforced asphalt. If 0.10 level of significance is used, then both the fiberglass and the polypropylene reinforced asphalt are superior to the unreinforced asphalt, while the composite fiberglass/fabric is inferior to the unreinforced asphalt. A reasonable number of specimens to conduct more meaningful statistical comparisons is suggested to be at least five specimens.