Effect of water aging on the fatigue performance of asphalt binders using the linear amplitude sweep

Abstract The fatigue characteristics of asphalt binders after water aging were studied. After undergoing the influence of various aging temperature, humidity and duration, the rheological and fatigue parameters of the binders were obtained through frequency sweep test and linear amplitude sweep (LAS) test. Based on the simplified viscoelastic continuous damage (S-VECD) model, damage characterization, fatigue parameters and fatigue prediction were investigated. The results show that with the temperature, humidity and duration rising, the damage increased significantly and fatigue performance decreased. When the strain was 10%, the change state of fatigue life (Nf) with different water aging conditions was reflected clearly. The damage parameters A and B were the main parameters to determine the fatigue life, and had a linear relationship with the complex modulus and fatigue factor to represent aging dependency, respectively. Also, there was a good consistency (R2 = 0.93) between the predicted Nf and the measured Nf. Therefore, the S-VECD model could effectively predict the fatigue life of the binders after water aging.