Impact of temperature cycling on fracture resistance of asphalt concretes

Asphalt pavements are exposed to complex weather conditions and vehicle traffic loads leading to crack initiation and crack propagation in asphalt pavements. This paper presents the impact of weather conditions on fracture toughness of an asphalt concrete, prevalently employed in Ardabil road networks, under tensile (mode I) and shear (mode II) loading. An improved semi-circular bend (SCB) specimen was employed to carry out the fracture experiments. These experiments were performed in two different weather conditions namely fixed and cyclic temperatures. The results showed that consideration of the impact of temperature cycling resulted in decreasing the fracture toughness of asphalt concrete significantly. Furthermore, the fracture toughness was highly affected by loading mode for the both fixed and cyclic temperature conditions studied in this paper. In addition, it was found that the MTS criterion correctly predicts the onset of fracture initiation although this prediction was slightly conservative.