Evaluation of fatigue behavior of asphalt binders containing reclaimed asphalt binder using simplified viscoelastic continuum damage approach

Abstract

Several fatigue damage analysis approaches have been introduced for asphalt binders and mixtures. In this study, using three modifiers including softer bitumen, a rejuvenator and waste polymer modified bitumen, fatigue behavior of RAB-containing binder mixes was evaluated based on the simplified viscoelastic continuum damage mechanics (S-VECD). In addition, correlations between the S-VECD parameters and the other fatigue failure criteria were investigated. For this purpose, the time sweep test was used to evaluate fatigue behavior of various asphalt binders in controlled-strain mode. Results showed that the rejuvenator and softer bitumen had the greatest effect in terms of prioritization on the improvement of the fatigue resistance of the RAB-containing binder mixes. Moreover, the results showed that good unique relationships between plateau value (PV) and Nf50 and between rate of change of total released pseudo strain energy (GR) and Nf50 were established in the RAB-containing binder mixes. Furthermore, there was a good relationship between the two concepts of the dissipated energy approach used for determination of the PV and the dissipated pseudo strain energy approach which used for calculation of the GR values.