Application of Thixotropy to Analyze Fatigue and Healing Characteristics of Asphalt Binder

The fatigue performance of asphalt binder is critical to understanding the fatigue performance of asphalt mixtures, especially the effects of healing. Although research into the fatigue and healing characteristics of asphalt binder is found in numerous references, an efficient technique to evaluate these characteristics still does not exist. Thixotropy is a concept that may help explain the material behavior and provide an efficient evaluation technique. This property is related to the breakdown and buildup of microstructure that may cause the changes observed during fatigue and healing tests. Thus, tracking the thixotropy of asphalt binders may be a good method to study fatigue and healing. For this study, experiments were performed to characterize the fatigue and healing characteristics of three typical asphalt binders. Then a common thixotropic model was characterized with a relatively simple stepped-flow test and oscillation experiment. The resulting model shows good correlation with the measured fatigue and healing tests. This finding, though based on a limited number of binders, suggests that thixotropy may play a role in the fatigue and healing characteristics of asphalt binder.