Abstract
Because the aging of asphalt binders affects nearly all critical aspects of asphalt mixtures, aging is a fundamentally important factor that affects pavement performance. This study developed a methodology to predict the rheological and damage properties of asphalt binders after they were subjected to aging. Three asphalt binders (one neat and two modified) were aged at four temperatures in a standard atmosphere for different periods. An approximately linear relationship between the carbonyl area and the log of the crossover modulus was found, but the relationship was asphalt specific. It was also found that the inverse of the log crossover modulus could be characterized with the Arrhenius kinetics model. The relationship between the log crossover frequency and log crossover modulus was linear at each aging temperature. The crossover modulus and crossover frequency were used in the Christensen–Anderson model to predict the complex modulus and phase angle master curves of the binders. The predicted complex shear modulus and phase angle of the asphalt binders after aging, on the basis of the carbonyl area, matched well with the measured complex shear modulus and phase angle values, except for the phase angle of the modified binders at a high temperature or low frequency. The complex shear modulus was converted to the shear relaxation modulus and was found to correlate well with the shear strength and critical strain energy density, which was reported to be a cracking indicator in a previous study.
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