Characterization of Reinforced Asphalt Pavement Cracking Behavior using Flexural Analysis

This paper focuses on performance assessment and size effect evaluation on flexural fracture tests performed on two-layered reinforced asphalt specimens. A steel net and three fiber-glass grids were investigated. Three Point Bending tests were performed on 60mm tall specimens composed by both leveling (20mm) and wearing (40mm) layers. The test was performed on two differently-shaped specimens (400x100 mm beams and a 500x500 mm slabs) on both reinforced and not reinforced samples. Strain localization and damage distribution were investigated using an in-house Digital Image Correlation (DIC) System capable of achieving highly accurate 2D full-field strain maps of the specimens during loading.