Laboratory Ageing Effect on Fatigue Performance of Warm Mix Asphalt

Over recent years, a novel asphalt technology named warm mix asphalt (WMA) has been invented in order to reduce fuel consumption and emission in asphalt production comparing with conventional asphalt mixtures (HMA). Due to the fact that there are no old pavements to study the long-term performance of WMA, its ageing properties are not yet evaluated in great detail. This research utilizes the conventional fatigue analysis approach in exploring the fatigue life of WMA and comparing with conventional HMA as a control mixture. The fatigue beam were made with two aggregate gradations, two WMA additives, and tested at 25 ª. Laboratory-prepared sam-ples were aged artificially in the oven to simulate long-term ageing and then compared with unaged samples. Results of this study indicated that utilizing WMA technology not only reduces the mixing and compacting temperatures but also effectively extend the long-term performance of pavement compare with conventional asphalt pavement.