The Nottingham Asphalt Tester (NAT) is equipment used for rapid determination of modulus, permanent deformation and fatigue of

bituminous Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term a ...

mixtures. It uses cylindrical specimens that are cored from the

highway A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It is used for major roads, but also includes other public roads and public tracks. In some areas of the United States, it is used as an equivalent term to controlled-access ...

or prepared in laboratory. These

mechanical properties A materials property is an intensive property of a material, i.e., a physical property that does not depend on the amount of the material. These quantitative properties may be used as a metric by which the benefits of one material versus another ca ...

are essential to people involved in the production of roads and the development of materials used in road construction. NATs are used across the world by materials testing laboratories, universities, oil companies, regional laboratories, contractors and

consulting engineers Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

. The NAT was invented in the 1980s at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

by Keith Cooper, who later founded Cooper Research Technology Ltd.

References

Asphalt Construction equipment Materials testing Pavement engineering Pavements University of Nottingham {{civil-engineering-stub