Thermo-mechanical coupling effect on fatigue behavior of cement asphalt mortar

This contribution first presents a fatigue model to elaborate fatigue behavior of materials subjected to thermal mechanical effect. To calibrate the presented model, a valid experiment is then conducted on cement asphalt mortar. The model can be further extended to other materials and valid experimental data from literature is utilized for verification. Results suggested the model is sufficient to describe thermo-mechanical fatigue behavior of cement-based materials, under the condition that no phase or morphological change occurred in the fatigue temperature range. Finally, the developed model is applied to predict fatigue life of one current track.

Graphical abstractThe predicted and literature fatigue life of different materials were approximately distributed around 1:1 diagonal line (no-bias line) with an equal distance, which demonstrate the capability of the proposed model to predict the fatigue life of materials under the coupled thermal mechanical effect. For cement based materials, less temperature sensitivity, predicted results were almost identical to the literature experimental results. However, the proposed model failed to predict the resin–matrix laminates. Apparently, the predicted results are more scatter along with the no-bias line, which means that the proposed model cannot be applied to describe the fatigue behavior of temperature sensitive materials.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slideHighlights► A thermal–mechanical fatigue model was established for asphalt cement mortar. ► The model was successfully extended to cement based materials. ► The model needs further improvements when application scope is expanded.