Toward a Micromechanics-Based Procedure to Characterize Fatigue Performance of Asphalt Concrete

Abstract

A lattice-based micromechanics approach is proposed to characterize the cracking performance of asphalt concrete. A random truss lattice model was introduced and investigated for simulating the following: ( a) linear elastic and viscoelastic deformation of homogeneous materials in axial compression and shear loading experiments, ( b) linear elastic deformation and the stress field in heterogeneous materials in an axial compression loading experiment, and ( c) damage evolution in elastic solids under an indirect tensile test. The simulation results match well with the theoretical solutions and show excellent promise in predicting cracking patterns in the indirect tensile test. A brief discussion about ongoing work is also presented.