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Abstract Asphalt mixture is a heterogeneous material composed of aggregates, binder and air voids, which is always treated as a kind of visco-elastic material. The mechanistic behavior is between elastic and plastic. So evaluation of asphalt mixture fracture resistance may be more plausible using elastic-plastic mechanics. J-integral theory can avoid the complicated stress-strain field of the crack tip, has distinct physical meaning and can effectively evaluate the fracture resistance of the asphalt mixture. In this study, the fracture toughnessJC was conveniently determined from load-deformation data of a simple three –point bending fracture test using notched semi-circular specimens. To evaluate the effect of the asphalt mixture material properties on the variation of JC, three kinds of mixtures with different gradations were performed by adopting the semi-circular bending test method in a MTS testing system. Based on the digital image processing techniques, the Finite Element Model was constructed to simulate the test configuration. The numerical results were compared and analyzed with the experimental results. Results suggest that the fracture toughness JC could be used as a effective indicator to evaluate the fracture resistance of the asphalt mixture.
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Received: 24 September 2008
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2010, Vol. 31 
