Assessment of stiffness and fatigue tests in Portugal

Abstract

In the last decade, quality control of asphalt mixtures for pavement construction on the main Portuguese national road network used, most of the time, four-point bending beam tests (4pb) results as a reference. Stiffness modulus and fatigue laws established with samples prepared in the laboratory are usually used as a reference for behaviour/quality control analysis of the samples coming from the construction site. There is however, with this procedure, not only a problem of real world representation but also a question of the compatibility of results coming, again most of the time, from different laboratories using different equipments. Trying to address the second problem, this paper presents the results obtained from four-point bending tests carried out in three different laboratories in Portugal, owning three different 4pb equip-ments, concerning the performance characterization of a typical Portuguese base course asphalt mixture. The paper finally discusses the variability of the results obtained and underlines the main inferences that could be extracted.