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Highlights: [•] Fénix is a new monotonic test to assess fracture energy during cracking of bituminous mixtures. [•] EBADE is a new strain sweep test to evaluate fatigue resistance of bituminous mixes. [•] Failure Strain is defined from dissipated energy density obtained through EBADE test. [•] Variation of mechanical behaviour with temperature has been analyzed. [•] Master curve that provides information about mixture response has been defined. [•] Mixture properties at low temperatures must be considered during design phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fatigue is associated with the deterioration caused by applying repeated loads, and is affected by temperature or aging. Generally, time sweep tests are used to simulate fatigue, in order to obtain the fatigue laws. However, this requires too much time, often preventing its use. A method to estimate the fatigue laws from a strain sweep test is presented. The test was performed on a semi-dense mixture with different types of binder (unconditioned or aged) tested at different temperatures. This test is able to estimate fatigue laws more quickly, allowing the effect of different factors on the mixtures' fatigue life to be studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Fatigue is one of the most common causes of damage in bituminous pavements. However, since fatigue characterization requires complex cyclic tests, this property is not usually taken into account when designing bituminous mixtures. The present study introduces a new methodology to assess fatigue behavior of bituminous mixtures by means of a simpler procedure based on a new fracture test called Fénix. Several bituminous mixtures were tested at the Road Research Laboratory of the Technical University of Catalonia using the Fénix test and the three-point bending beam fatigue test, which complies with the new European standard UNE-EN 12697-24:2006. Results show that this new methodology assesses fatigue behavior of bituminous mixes by correlations between both tests. In addition, the procedure can be used to relate stiffness and dissipated energy parameters obtained in the cracking process, which allows the choice of mixtures with better fatigue performance considering the thermal conditions to which mixtures will be subjected during their service life. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]