A Study on Fatigue Behaviour of Bitumen Emulsion Mastic, Modified with Active Fillers

The environmental and sustainability requirements necessitate to develop green road materials. Thus, Cold Bituminous Emulsion (CBE) mixtures have been developed to meet these requirements. Nevertheless, CBE mixtures have been considered inferior to hot asphalt mixture due to its poor early mechanical strength. For this reason, different active fillers have been used to obtain high early strength. There is, however, insufficient aware about the effect of active fillers on the fatigue cracking resistance. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate the effect of filler on the fatigue behaviour of CBE mastics. The aim of this study is to assess the resulted fatigue behaviour of CBE mastic due to the active filler inclusions. To address this aim, time sweep tests using Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR) with 8 mm diameter and 2 mm thickness specimen were performed. Seven types of fillers were incorporated to prepare the CBE mastics. In this regard, five different approaches to define fatigue life were used. Based on the tests results, it is evident that the presence of active fillers significantly increases fatigue life of CBE as compared to the neat CBE.