Evaluation of Fatigue Characteristics of Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement Mixtures Through Dissipated Energy

Fatigue damage of asphalt mixture is the amount of energy dissipated from the tested sample in cyclic fatigue tests. The fatigue cracking could be reduced by prevailing the dissipated energy that can be applied to clarify the decrease in flexural stiffness. This study investigates the effects of Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) and strain level on the fatigue life and dissipated energy concepts of the asphalt mixtures. Thirty-six beams were prepared and tested at a constant strain loading mode with 0%, 30%, 50%, and 100% content of RAP at a temperature of 20 °C and frequency of 5 Hz at three strain levels of 750, 400, and 250 micro-strain. Results show that the plateau value (PV) criterion seemed more feasible in estimating the fatigue performance of RAP mixtures and the dissipated energy approach is useful to understand fatigue testing under load-controlled mode. Therefore, fatigue life can be projected without performing millions of load repetitions.