Analysis of the variation in the fatigue life through four-point bending tests

Abstract

The fatigue resistance of asphalt mixtures is calculated through laboratory tests which require some time depending on the strain level applied to the specimen. For very low strain levels, identical to the one installed in the pavement of this study, one test may last more than one week depending on the testing frequency. The time needed for the development of the fatigue law may last longer. The number of specimens used to calculate the fatigue resistance of an asphalt mixture plays an important role in the precision of pavement design. Thus, this paper presents a study to evaluate the number of tests to assess the fatigue resistance of asphalt mix-tures through the four-point bending technique. The results obtained from the analysis of three different asphalt mixtures tested by applying 3 strain levels and 6 specimens for each strain lev-el were used to evaluate the fatigue resistance dispersion to identify the number of tests to de-fine a fatigue law.