Relationship Between Fatigue Damage of Asphalt Binders and Corresponding Mixtures

Abstract

The performance of asphalt mixtures is affected by different factors, the type of binder being an important one. Mixture and binder behave as linear viscoelastic (LVE) materials when subjected to small strain and a small number of loading cycles. However, when the number of cycles is greatly increased, fatigue damage accumulates. In the linear domain, for the characterization of such materials, complex modulus is evaluated, and its change in fatigue tests may be used as an indicator of fatigue damage evolution. With damage growth, one of the major distresses in pavements appears: fatigue cracking. The loss of stiffness occurs as damage accumulates with the eventual coalescence of macrocracks. The objective of this work is to relate fatigue damage properties of asphalt binders and the corresponding asphalt mixtures. The materials used in the research are: three binders and their corresponding asphalt mixtures, considering the same aggregate skeleton. The results suggest that fatigue damage in the binders presents good correlation with fatigue damage in the corresponding mixtures.