RETRACTED: Fracture mechanism in bitumen, modified bitumen and asphalt mixes

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.The authors have taken the majority of content in this paper from Benjamin Smith's thesis [LOW-TEMPERATURE AND DYNAMIC FATIGUE TOUGHENING MECHANISMS IN ASPHALT MASTICS AND MIXTURES][http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/MQ55931.pdf] [ISBN: 0612559319]. Benjamin Smith was credited as a co-author for the paper but had no knowledge of this paper being published with his name attributed to it. A condition of submission of a paper for publication is that the corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. Authors also declare explicitly that their work is original and has not appeared in a publication elsewhere. Re-use of any data should be appropriately cited. Having failed to adhere to these conditions of submission, this article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.