Establishment of a universal healing evaluation index for asphalt binder

In this paper, the healing performance of four different asphalt binders is analyzed. By comparing the healing curve to the initial curve, a ratio that is based on the areas created by the curves is found to reflect the healing performance of asphalt binders. Once the healing evaluation indices are established, they are also used to evaluate the mastics, and the applicability of the indices is analyzed. Also, a healing function for asphalt binder is established. The results show that the HIm-c index (based on the curve of the normalized modulus versus load cycles), the HIem-c index (based on the curve of the elastic modulus versus load cycles) and the HIvm-c index (based on the curve of the viscous modulus versus load cycles) suggest the same rankings for the healing of the studied binders. The healing ranking of the binders is also the same as that of the corresponding mastics evaluated by the HIm-c index. Based on the established healing function, it is found that the effect of terminal cases on the healing performance of asphalt binder is greater than the effect of rest periods.