Fatigue and healing performance of bituminous binders and mixtures for road pavement: Results of re-road project

An asphalt mixture is believed to be a partial self-healing material. For asphalt pavement design, this characteristic is taken into account as a shift healing factor. Healing during rest periods will result in a longer structural design life for the mixture in situ, compared to the fatigue life determined with a continuous sinusoidal test in the laboratory. For the FP7 Re-Road project, an extensive research programme was completed in order to increase the recyclability of asphalt mixtures, in particular asphalt mixtures with polymer modified binder. One research task dealt about performance modelling of asphalt pavement containing Reclaimed Asphalt (RA). For this, fatigue and healing tests were performed on virgin and aged binders, mastics and asphalt mixtures. Bituminous binders and mastics (virgin and aged) were tested using a Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR) in oscillation model. The fatigue and healing properties of the asphalt mixtures were determined by means of a dynamic test on compacted asphalt samples. The binders, mastic and asphalt test results show a significant increment in fatigue life when rest periods are taken into account between fatigue cycles