Cyclic testing setups to highlight the importance of heating and other reversible phenomena on asphalt mixtures

Abstract This paper highlights the importance of the reversible phenomena in cyclic testing of asphalt mixtures. Several tests were designed to quantify the importance of these phenomena, focusing especially on heating due to viscous dissipation during cycling. Results showed that the decrease in stiffness observed during high frequency cyclic testing, and normally assumed by the conventional fatigue characterization procedures as damage, is in fact caused by reversible phenomena that are characteristic of visco-elasto-plastic materials under these conditions (heating, thixotropy, nonlinearity and healing). By obtaining the thermo-mechanical properties of the study mixture, the importance of heating within all reversible phenomena was studied.