Issue 43

M. Fakhri et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 43 (2018) 113-132; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.43.09 118 Experiment Aggregate Air void content Bitumen Loading rate Temperature Number of test specimens Mode I (MI) lime Silica 3% 5% 7% PG 64- 22 1 mm/min 5 mm/min 10 mm/min 50 mm/min 5 °C 15 °C 25 °C 77 Mode II (MII) lime Silica 3% 5% 7% PG 64- 22 1 mm/min 5 mm/min 10 mm/min 50 mm/min 5 °C 15 °C 25 °C 72 Mixed Mode I/II (MIII) lime Silica 3% 5% 7% PG 64- 22 1 mm/min 5 mm/min 10 mm/min 50 mm/min 5 °C 15 °C 25 °C 80 Table 4 : Specifications of fracture experiments conducted on the SCB specimens made of different HMA mixtures. Testing procedure All the SCB specimens were prepared for low and intermediate temperature fracture testing under three-point bend loading. Therefore, the fabricated HMA specimens were kept inside a specific chamber at three temperature levels of 5, 15 and 25°C for at least 12 h before testing. A compression test machine (STM-20M) with the loading capacity of 20 kN was used for loading the SCB specimens with different rates of 1, 5, 10 and 50 mm/min for the whole samples. The load and load-line displacement values were recorded using the digital data logger of test machine during the test. Generally at intermediate temperatures and lower loading rates the bitumen behaves as viscous material and conversely at low temperatures and higher loading rates, brittleness of bitumen may result in linear and elastic behavior for the asphalt mixtures. The experimental results of this research showed that all the specimens have curved load– displacement graph and the fracture of all samples was started gradually from the crack tip at a critical load level. A typical load–displacement curve and the observed fracture path for one of the tested samples have been shown in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4. Figure 3 : A typical Load–displacement graph obtained for one of the HMA mixtures tested at 25°C. Figure 4 : Fracture path observed for the SCB specimen under Me =1 loading condition and test temperature of 5 °C.