DUSST: Development of a new stress sweep fatigue test for asphalt mixtures

Fatigue cracking is one of the main damage mechanisms that take place in asphalt pavements. However, its evaluation during the design asphalt mixtures is not usually considered due to the complexity of the tests required, their high costs and the long time required to perform them. As a consequence, several research teams are working on developing new test procedures to reduce the time related to fatigue characterization of asphalt mixtures. In this context, this paper presents the development of a new test procedure consisting of a cyclic uniaxial tension-compression test in which the stress applied increases every 5000 cycles. In this manner, it is possible to evaluate a mixture's response under cyclic loading at different stress levels in one test. Also, failure of the mixture takes place in a shorter time period than that required by classical time sweep fatigue tests. This paper presents results obtained in the application of this new methodology to a mixture frequently used in Chilean pavement structures (type IV-A-12 by Chilean standards) with three different asphalt binders: a conventional binder (CA-24), a high modulus binder (CA-HM) and a polymer-modified binder (CA-PM). We evaluated three different types of aggregates obtained through two different shredding processes. Results achieved in the development of our Direct Uniaxial Stress Sweep Test (DUSST) show that it is an experimental method with great potential. This test can characterize fatigue behaviors of asphalt mixtures in a shorter time by using important parameters such as initial strain, failure strain, complex modulus and dissipated energy. In addition, we obtained a good sensitivity of the DUSST main parameters to variables evaluated.