BITuminous Mortars: an Accelerated testing APproach (BITMA²P).

Investigating the viscoelastic properties of bituminous mortars can lead to a better understanding of the mechanical behavior of asphalt mixtures and therefore, the design and construction of cost-effective and sustainable road structures. Even though bituminous mortar is considered as the missing link between binder and asphalt mixtures and is gaining increased worldwide attention, there are still no effective tests to quantify its viscoelastic behavior. The state-of-the-art methods to determine the properties of these materials are cyclic-loading tests, which are time-consuming and use classical measurement instruments that only provide a global view of the mechanical performance of the whole sample. In this research, novel accelerated testing procedures are proposed that use the full-field vibration response of the samples to estimate the complex modulus and fatigue properties of bituminous mortars. Different optical measurement techniques are used and combined to design and validate these novel methods. These methods will be a big step forward in the road engineering community since the testing time is reduced from hours/days to a few minutes. This offers the possibility to conduct research on more samples and improve the mixture designs. Furthermore, the full-field measurements with the combined optical systems can shed light on some of the highly investigated aspects of asphalt mixtures, such as blending efficiency, self-heating, and the location of microcracks.

Keywords:VIBROMETRY, BITUMEN, ULTRASONIC

Disciplines:Construction materials technology, Dynamics, vibration and vibration control, Signals and systems, Destructive and non-destructive testing of materials