Thixotropic Characteristics of Asphalt Binder

Asphalt binder has thixotropic characteristics that significantly affect its overall performance, but specifically fatigue performance, healing performance, and high temperature performance. Therefore, a clear understanding of the thixotropy of asphalt binder, together with proper modeling, is useful in researching the performance of the material. However, research in this area is still in the early stages of investigation. For the study reported in this paper, the thixotropy of four types of asphalt binder is examined by using various methods to establish corresponding thixotropy models. The results show that the exponential thixotropy model, the extended exponential function, and the structural kinetic model can be established by using different methods, and they all reflect the thixotropy of asphalt binder to some extent. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)MT.1943-5533.0000328. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.