Binder testing

Abstract

In this chapter, a state of the art on the basics of the fatigue phenomenon of engineering materials is presented, with special attention to asphalt materials and bituminous binders. Since engineering materials are exposed to complex mechanical and environmental loadings (e.g. temperature and humidity variation etc.) asphalt mixture fatigue tests have been developed and widely used in the last decades. These tests are time consuming and relatively expensive. Hence, binder fatigue tests might be an effective preliminary evaluation of material helpful for mixture fatigue life testing. Binder fatigue tests are used to investigate the fatigue behavior of bituminous binders and mastics, to compare different binder types, and to investigate the role of the binder in mixture fatigue behavior. The most common equipment for binder fatigue tests has been the plate-plate Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR). Other test geometries have been proposed as well. Even if DSR testing has become popular, there are up to now little data available on the reproducibility of this test. Task Group 1 (Binders) of the RILEM TC 206-ATB (Advanced Testing of Bituminous materials) undertook the task of organization of the RILEM Round Robin Binder Fatigue Test (RRRBFT). The purpose of this interlaboratory test was to investigate the repeatability as well as the reproducibility of binder fatigue tests.