Issue 47

M. Fallah Tafti et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 47 (2019) 169-185; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.47.14 169 Design of Civil Environmental Engineering The impacts of type and proportion of five different asphalt modifiers on the low-temperature fracture toughness and fracture energy of modified HMA Mehdi Fallah Tafti, Seyyed Abuzar Hoseini Aqda Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran, Fallah.Tfati@Yazd.ac.ir , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6844-3316 seyyedabuzar@gmail.com Hamed Motamedi General Directorate of Roads and Urban Development of Yazd Province, Yazd, Iran Motamedi_iranroad@yahoo.com A BSTRACT . Low-temperature fracture toughness and fracture energy are two important measures that could be used to investigate the impacts of using asphalt modifiers on the performance of asphalt pavements in cold regions. The aim of this research was to identify the impacts of using various proportions of five different asphalt modifiers on the fracture toughness and the fracture energy of Hot Mix Asphalts (HMA) under mode I loading and at low environmental temperatures. The asphalt modifiers used for this purpose were: Elastoplastomer Polymer Strings (EPS), Parafiber, Sulfur Polymer, Polyolefin-Aramid Compound Structural Fibers (PACSF) and Sasobit. These modifiers were individually used at three different proportions to produce Semi-circular Bend Specimens containing vertical edge crack. Each specimen was then tested under symmetric monotonic three-point bend loading at - 15°C. The results indicated that, except for the EPS, both fracture toughness and fracture energy were increased with an increase in the modifier proportion. The highest increase in both measures was observed in the specimens modified with the PACSF, closely followed by specimens modified with the Parafibers. The least increase in these two measures was observed in the specimens modified with the Sulfur Polymer. The results indicated the applicability of examined modifiers to improve the resistance of HMA to crack initiation and crack growth at low temperatures. K EYWORDS . Mode-I Fracture Toughness; Mode-I Fracture Energy; Hot Mix Asphalt; Low-Temperature Cracking; Asphalt Modifiers. Citation: Fallah Tafti, M., Hoseini Aqda, A., Motamedi, H., The Impacts of Type and Proportion of Five Different Asphalt Modifiers on the Low-Temperature Fracture Toughness and Fracture Energy of Modified HMA, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 47 (2019) 169-185. Received: 07.10.2018 Accepted: 05.11.2018 Published: 01.01.2019 Copyright: © 2019 This is an open access article under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.