# Performance of Stone Masking Asphalt Mixtures Fabricated by Different Compaction Methods
## 1 Introduction  
Stone mastic asphalt (SMA) is widely used in pavement engineering owing to its good road performance [1; 2]; however, with an increase in traffic, vehicle load, and occurrence of extreme weather events has increased the number of cracks, nuts, oil flooding and water seepage onto SMA pavements [3]. At present, SMA mixtures are widely designed by the Marshall method or superpave gyratory compaction (SGC) method. However, long-term engineering experience has found that the Marshall method achieves low compaction standards and is difficult to adapt to modern transportation [4]. Many researchers have proposed increasing the number of blows, but the hammer compaction largely affects the aggregate grading, and the aggregates are easily crushed during compaction, thereby reducing the correlation between the mechanical properties of the test specimen and the pavement core. The problems caused by increasing the number of blows are especially prominent in skeleton structure mixtures such as SMA. Crushing the coarse aggregates of the SMA mixture not only changes the gradation, but also affects the skeleton structure of the mixture and reduces its structural strength and pavement performance [5; 6]. The SGC method is popular because the samples formed by gyratory compaction are well correlated with the field core. [PERSON] etal. [7] formed SMA mixtures with shredded waste plastics by the SGC method, and studied their road performance. [PERSON] et al. [8] introduced a new type of automatic rotary compactor and evaluated its ability to compact SMA. They also introduced a weighting factor that compensates the crushing effect of the aggregates during mixing and compaction. [PERSON] et al. [9] concluded that when designing SMA mixtures by SGC in China, the number of rotations must match the traffic volume and highway grade. [PERSON] et al. [10] compared the road performances of SMA mixtures designed by the Marshall and SGC methods. Their studies found that SGC is widely used worldwide [11; 12].  
To improve the consistency between the test specimen after molding and the pavement core sample after completing the compaction operation in the field, may researcher simulate the construction vibration compaction of the asphalt mixture in laboratory studies. The pavement performance of the asphalt mixture is improved by optimizing the mix ratio of the mixture specimen [13]. The vertical-vibration testing method (VVTM) properly simulates the working condition of the vibrating rollers. [PERSON] [14; 15] studied the applicability of the VVTM to AC-13 mixtures, proposed suitable vibration parameters and selection standards for asphalt-mixture molding, and compared the mechanical strengths of the vibration specimen and the design pavement core samples. The correlation in the VVTM specimens was as high as 92.1%. Road workers in France, Switzerland and other countries have studied the effect of vibration molding by subjecting test specimens to lateral vibrations under a vertical load [16]. Thus far, VVTM has proven successful in designing road surface materials such as dense-graded asphalt mixtures and recycled emulsified asphalt mixtures [17; 18; 19; 20; 21], and road base materials such as cement stabilized macadam [22; 23; 24; 25]. All of these materials achieve high road performance. However, the VVTM method has not been applied to the design of high-performance SMA mixtures.  
The present study compares the volume parameters, mechanical properties, road performances, and fatigue performances of SMA-13 mixtures designed by the Marshall, SGC, and VVTM approaches, and verifies the superiority of VVTM in the design of SMA mixtures. It then compares and chooses a design method that improves the road performance and durability of SMA pavements exposed to modern traffic conditions.