Binder, mastic and mixture fatigue characterization using a cyclic uniaxial strain sweep test

Fatigue cracking is a major problem in bituminous pavements. The bitumen and mastic properties influence very strongly on the final mixture fatigue behaviour. For that reason it is very important to study the fatigue behaviour of these materials and compare it between them. This paper describes the application of a new test procedure, called EBADE, which allows characterizing fatigue behaviour of asphalt materials with shorter testing time. The test performs a strain sweep, the strain amplitude increases every 5,000 cycles, providing the complex modulus at low strain amplitude and the maximum strain amplitude the material can sustain. Furthermore, this test procedure allows testing binders, mastics and mixtures at different temperatures using the same loading configuration. Three binders, mastics and mixtures were tested at three different temperatures (+10, +3 and -5ºC). The results showed that there is a correlation between binder’s, mastic’s and mixture’s fatigue behaviour and that materials with the same initial complex modulus, the higher the failure strain, the better the fatigue behaviour they exhibit. The polymer modified binder, mastic and mixture fabricated with it, obtained the best results at all temperatures