Relating tensile, bending, and shear test data of asphalt binders to pavement performance

Eight different asphalt binders representing a wide range of applications for pavement construction were tested in uniaxial tension, bending, and shear stresses. Theoretical analyses were performed in this study to convert the data from the three engineering tests to stiffness moduli for predicting pavement performance. At low temperatures, high asphalt stiffness may induce pavement thermal cracking; thus, the allowable maximum stiffness was set at 1,000 MPa. At high temperatures, low asphalt stiffness may lead to pavement rutting (ruts in the road); master curves were constructed to rank the potential for rutting in the asphalts. All three viscoelastic functions were shown to be interchangeable within the linear viscoelastic region. When subjected to large deformation in the direct tension test, asphalt binders behaved nonlinear viscoelastic in which the data under bending, shear and tension modes were not comparable. The asphalts were, however, found to exhibit linear viscoelasticity up to the failure point in the steady-state strain region.