Measurement of HMA shear resistance potential in the lab: The Simple Punching Shear Test Abu N.M. Faruk a,⇑ , Sang I. Lee a , Jun Zhang b , Bhaven Naik c , Lubinda F. Walubita d a Texas A&M Transportation Institute, College Station, TX 77843, USA b Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA c Department of Civil Engineering, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701, USA d TTI & PVAMU, The Texas A&M University System, College Station, USA highlights  Rutting/permanent deformation (PD) is one of the major distresses for HMA pavements.  Current HMA PD tests are not inherently designed to capture HMA shear properties.  SPST is explored as a potential routine test to evaluate HMA shear properties.  SPST has promising potential to screen HMA in terms of their shear resistance.  SPST can be a useful tool as a surrogate HMA rutting/shear test. article info Article history: Received 10 March 2015 Received in revised form 26 August 2015 Accepted 8 September 2015 Available online 19 September 2015 Keywords: HMA performance testing Rutting Simple Punching Shear Test SPST Shear strength Shear strain energy abstract Rutting or permanent deformation (PD) is one of the major distresses occurring in hot-mix asphalt (HMA) pavements. The primary mechanism of HMA rutting is shear deformation often caused by large stresses in the HMA layers under traffic loading, particularly at elevated temperatures. The current HMA rutting and PD tests, though have a fairly proven history of successfully identifying and screening HMA mixes that are prone to rutting, are not inherently designed to capture the HMA shear properties such as shear strength, shear strain, and shear modulus. As supplement to the traditional PD and rutting tests, a new HMA test method, namely the Simple Punching Shear Test (SPST), was explored as a potential routine lab- oratory test to evaluate and characterize the HMA shear properties. The SPST protocol and the input parameters were established through a series of comprehensive trial testing of HMA mixes commonly used in Texas. SPST data analysis models were derived to evaluate various HMA shear parameters includ- ing the shear strength, shear modulus, and shear strain energy (SSE). The corresponding results indicated that the SPST has promising potential to routinely differentiate and screen HMA mixes in terms of their shear resistance potentials. The test is fairly simple to run and very repeatable (coefficient of variation of the measured HMA shear strength are less than 10%) with measured shear strength values within range of typical HMA shear strengths as reported in the literature. Additionally the test demonstrated high sen- sitivity to HMA volumetric design parameters such as the asphalt binder content with HMA shear resis- tance decreasing with increasing asphalt binder contents. A comparison with the Hamburg Wheel Tracking Test (HWTT), which is a traditional HMA rutting test, showed that while, in general, the HMA rutting/shear properties obtained from the two tests are qualitatively comparable, some differences do exist in terms of the shear performance prediction from the two tests. This evidently indicates that the SPST is able to capture and expose certain shear characteristics of the HMA that the HWTT is not able to capture and vice versa. Overall, this study has shown that the SPST can be a useful tool for character- izing the HMA shear properties and has promising potential to be used as a surrogate rutting/shear test. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 1. Introduction Rutting or permanent deformation (PD) is one of the primary failure modes of flexible pavements constructed with hot-mix http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2015.09.006 0950-0618/Published by Elsevier Ltd. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: abu.mdfaruk@gmail.com (A.N.M. Faruk). Construction and Building Materials 99 (2015) 62–72 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Construction and Building Materials journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat