A dissipated pseudo strain energy-based failure criterion for thermal cracking and its verification using thermal stress restrained specimen tests

Abstract

Low-temperature cracking is one of the most prevalent types of distress in asphalt concrete pavements in regions where the air temperature undergoes a significant daily drop. This paper proposes a failure criterion that correlates the dissipated pseudo strain energy (DPSE) at the time of failure with the reduced strain rate. Uniaxial direct tension monotonic tests, axial compression dynamic modulus tests, and direct tension cyclic fatigue tests were performed using the Asphalt Mixture Performance Tester (AMPT) for a wide range of asphalt mixtures with different reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) contents, binder contents, virgin binder performance grades, and aging levels. The results show that the simplified viscoelastic continuum damage (S-VECD) model, which is characterized by the dynamic modulus and cyclic fatigue test results, can predict the stress-strain behavior of a given mixture subjected to monotonic tests at different temperatures and loading rates. This finding allows the prediction of DPSE in monotonic tension tests using the S-VECD model. The thermal stress restrained specimen test (TSRST) was then used to verify the DPSE-based failure criterion and the ability of the S-VECD model to predict thermal fracture behavior. The study results show that the predicted fracture temperatures match the measured ones for the study mixtures with reasonable accuracy. The study also used data from mixtures whose RAP contents, binder contents, virgin binder grades, and aging levels were systematically altered to verify the reasonableness of the proposed procedure to evaluate the differences in thermal fracture performance that are due to changes in these factors. The ability to predict the fracture stress and fracture temperature measured via the TSRST using the S-VECD model and the suggested DPSE failure criterion is of substantial practical and technical importance because it allows the prediction of both fatigue cracking and thermal cracking using a single set of tests, i.e., AMPT dynamic modulus and cyclic fatigue tests.