A Critical Analysis of the Standard Used to Evaluate De-icing Damage in Asphalt Materials

De-icing fluids are known to have a potential to negatively affect infrastructure materials such as asphalt. In order to evaluate the resistance of asphalt materials to de-icing fluids, the European standard method EN 12697-41 is commonly used. There are however a number of issues related to the method, such as a high variability of the results and poor correlation between test results and behavior in the field, which may be caused by some of the parameters of the test. This paper aims to identify and investigate some parameters that are of importance to the relevancy of the test. To do this, experimental tests of asphalt mastic and mixture are performed with two concentrations of a deicer and water. Additionally, to gain a better understanding of what occurs in the tested samples during the conditioning and loading, finite element simulations using a microscale model with a mesh based on an X-ray CT scan of a real sample, are performed. The results show that both the geometry and the set-up of the conditioning and mechanical testing can cause misleading results. Based on this, recommendations are made for areas for future studies to improve the test method.