Reliability assessment of flexural fatigue failure of asphalt mixture: A new perspective

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate the evolution of reliability with number of cycles for asphalt mixture under repeated fatigue loading, i.e. degradation reliability. A novel methodological framework was developed to analyze the reliability, which integrates four theories (reliability theory, probability distribution function transformation, fatigue damage and Weibull distribution). Based on the developed framework, a novel and simple method was established to calculate the degradation reliability through a probabilistic simulation technique. Flexural fatigue performance of asphalt mixture was then analyzed statistically by Weibull distribution function. The five numerical methods were adopted and compared to estimate Weibull parameters. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was conducted for further confirming the validity of this distribution. The reliability of asphalt mixture under fatigue loading was assessed using the established method. Results show that the randomness evolution behaviors of asphalt mixture under fatigue loading can be described by the developed framework. The degradation reliability under non-fatigue damage behaviors may be able to be calculated by the established method. The two-parameters Weibull distribution allows to describe fatigue life data of asphalt mixture. The evolutions of reliability with number of cycles show a decrease trend with three-stage. The degradation reliability of asphalt mixture in practical project should be larger than the value corresponding to mean fatigue life as far as possible. Method of moments should be adopted to estimate distribution parameters for the evaluation of degradation reliability of asphalt mixture, the health state of asphalt mixture is thus early warned timely.