Impact of Deicers on Low-Temperature Performance of Missouri Pavements

The use of deicer chemicals for highway winter maintenance operations is an essential strategy for ensuring a reasonably high level of service. It's critical to quantify their effectiveness and potentially detrimental effects on transportation infrastructure (i.e., asphalt and concrete pavements). In this study, nine deicer chemicals used in the state of Missouri were collected. The ice-melting test was conducted to quantify the performance characteristics of deicer chemicals. Freeze-thaw (F-T) test of concrete in the presence of deicer was conducted to quantify the negative effects of deicers to concrete. Low-temperature behavior of asphalt mixture affected by deicers was quantified by asphalt mixture indirect tensile (IDT) tests. The results showed that the calcium chloride (liquid) treated rock salt had the best ice melting capacity among all the studied products, while the calcium chloride (flake/pellet) treated rock salt showed the lowest ice melting capacity. The IDT creep compliance and strength of asphalt mixture results indicated brine treated rock salt and "Top Film" treated rock salt had insignificant effects on the creep compliance of asphalt mixture, regardless of testing temperatures. The deicer chemicals had different scaling effects on concrete beams after F-T cycles. The calcium chloride (liquid) treated rock salt had little scaling effect on the concrete beams. However, concrete beams with the presence of brine treated rock salt showed the highest mass loss values.