The use of stress sweep tests for asphalt mixtures nonlinear viscoelastic and fatigue damage responses identification

Abstract

Asphaltic materials are known to present a behavior that can be approximated by the theory of viscoelasticity. For these materials it is essential to characterize fatigue damage. An important aspect therein is the separation between nonlinear viscoelastic and fatigue damage responses. This is a complex issue, since both nonlinearity and damage have a similar effect on the overall material mechanical behavior, i.e. decrease in the stiffness and increase in the phase angle. This paper presents an experimental and a mathematical procedure to separate the nonlinear viscoelastic from the fatigue damage response for asphaltic materials. Stress sweep tests were used to characterize a hot mixture asphalt at nine conditions (three temperatures and three frequencies). Once all strain values were obtained in a stress controlled sweep test, a statistical analysis was used to find the maximum stress that can be applied to the material without invoking the damage response. The results showed that the transition stress value is directly associated with material properties, the stiffness being an important factor in this result. Consequently, stress, temperature and frequency determine together the mechanical response of the material (linear or nonlinear viscoelastic, fatigue damage and/or plastic deformation). Results from this study can be associated with other fatigue damage approaches in order to better select the stress or strain amplitude that should be used in fatigue tests, and to eliminate the amount of energy that is dissipated in the nonlinear viscoelastic region.