Pavements of enhanced longevity would be expected to withstand long-term traffic as well as varying environmental conditions reducing in this way the major maintenance needs. Considering also the adoption of long-term contracts by road authorities, long-life pavements have started to attract the interest of road contractors worldwide. New and relatively new binders specially designed to produce long-life pavements have been proposed to minimize the regular maintenance and reconstruction operations. Among others, one promising technology to reach this goal is the epoxy modified asphalt binder, or epoxy-asphalt. Nevertheless, the addition of epoxy resins to asphalt binders may result in materials of inferior properties. Thermosetting epoxy resins may not mix homogeneously in asphalt binders leading to immiscible or partially miscible binders, which are mostly phase-separated materials. The phase-separated epoxy-asphalt binders can become brittle and thus more prone to cracking, leading the pavements to fail. Only a few epoxy products are applicable in asphalt binders, and the knowledge of incorporating chemistry to develop miscible epoxy binders remains unknown. For this to be the case, this thesis aims to provide a fundamental approach to elucidate the chemical and physical processes that determine the phase behavior of these binders. A vital role in implementing the thermosetting epoxy-asphalt binders also plays the curing. To obtain fundamental insights into the material curing, multi-physics models and experimental methods are considered in this research to identify and assess the curing-induced changes of epoxy-asphalt. The development of rheological properties that reflect the material workability is determined by laboratory experiments and used as input to multi-physics simulations. As the ultimate scope of implementing the epoxy-asphalt is to increase the longevity of pavements, the oxidation-induced changes of epoxy-asphalt materials as a function of time are evaluated as well in this research to prove their high aging resistance for wearing courses. Within the same framework, emphasis is also given to the effect of epoxy-asphalt on the durability and mechanical performance characteristics of an asphalt concrete mix. In conclusion, this thesis contributes to elucidating the factors that determine the curing- and oxidation-induced changes of epoxy-asphalt and understanding what bears miscible binders. The modeling and experimental programs discussed throughout the thesis can help to provide the fundamental knowledge to design and develop new binders and binding systems of the desired properties and characteristics.

A sustainable pavement, which can minimize environmental impacts through the reduction of energy consumption, natural resources and associated emissions while meeting all performance conditions and standards, is in urgent need to combat the climate change. The current scenario of depleting crude oil, reduced quarry zones, and stringent environmental regulations has driven the use of waste materials and by-products in pavement applications. The utilization of crumb rubber from scrap tires for bitumen modification has become a common engineering practice since last century...

A well-functioning, long-lasting and safe highway infrastructure network ensures the mobility of people and facilitates the transport of goods, promoting thus environmental, economic, and social sustainability. The development of sustainable highway infrastructure requires, among other activities, the construction of pavement systems with enhanced durability. Moisture damage in asphalt pavements is associated with inferior performance, unexpected failures and reduced service life. All of these contribute to the increase of operational and maintenance costs in order to fulfill the intended service life of the pavement system. Moreover, global warming and climate change events such as temperature extremes, high mean precipitation and rainfall intensity may further increase the probability and rate of pavement deterioration.
This dissertation aims to obtain an advanced understanding of the influence of moisture on pavement durability by developing a set of tools, i.e. experimental methods and computational models, which will provide insight into the fundamental moisture damage processes and on their impact on pavement systems. Based on this knowledge, researchers and practitioners will be able not only to design pavements with increased resiliency, thereby providing reliable services to road users, but also to minimize the risks in the face of changing climate conditions.
Moisture diffusion is well-known to degrade the mechanical properties of asphalt mortars, namely bitumen, filler and sand, thus increasing the propensity of pavements to cracking. To determine the changes in the cohesion properties of the mortar, uniaxial tension tests were performed. Mortar samples were prepared and then subjected to five combinations of moisture and thermal conditioning, in an attempt to reproduce the various conditioning states that pavements undergo in the field, before being tested. Tensile strength and fracture energy were used to evaluate the changes in mechanical properties due to the various conditioning protocols. To post-process the experimental data, a new data analysis procedure was suggested in order to obtain a more accurate calculation of fracture energy. The procedure uses nonlinear finite element analysis to specify the unloading response outside the fracture zone, and then utilizes this information to compute the fracture energy of the binders. This methodology yields a framework for the calculation of fracture energy when only force-displacement data are available and therefore the estimation of the true stress-strain curve is not feasible.
The experimental investigation revealed the deteriorating impact of moisture on the fracture characteristics of asphalt mortars, especially as regards to their low temperature properties. These effects were not reversible upon drying. On the contrary, the application of a drying cycle caused embrittlement of the mortars and indicated that continuous wet and drying cycles in the field may result in materials with poor performance characteristics. Also, the application of freeze-thaw cycles was shown to increase the susceptibility of mortars to low temperature cracking. Nevertheless, on the whole, the effect of freeze-thaw on fracture properties was observed to depend on the conditioning state (dry or wet) and composition of the mortars. The use of additives, such as hydrated lime filler and SBS modifiers, were found to improve the wet strength and fracture energy of the mortars. On the basis of moisture uptake measurements, it was confirmed that the chemical composition influences significantly the diffusivity characteristics of the mortars. Also, the maximum moisture uptake was found to be the main parameter that dictates the intensity of mortar damage.
In addition, moisture susceptibility was studied at mixture level. At this level, besides moisture diffusion, excess pore pressure can contribute to the degradation of mixture performance depending on the mixture type, the traffic loading and the environmental conditions. Hence, a moisture conditioning protocol that comprises two conditioning types, namely bath immersion and pore pressure application, was proposed for evaluating susceptibility of asphalt mixtures to moisture. Also, evidence was collected of the effect that dynamic pore pressure has on mixture degradation by means of X-ray computed tomography and image analysis techniques. The two damage mechanisms were found to be relatively independent from each other, suggesting that an asphalt mixture can be more prone to one damage mode than the other, depending on its composition. The proposed protocol captures both processes that occur when water interacts with a pavement and can provide more reliable conclusions with regard to mixture sensitivity.
In order to improve our perception of the influence of material microstructures on moisture sensitivity of the asphalt composite, an energy-based elasto-visco-plastic model with softening was implemented to model damage due to the coupled effects of moisture diffusion and mechanical loading. The model consists of a generalized Maxwell model, with hyperelastic springs and viscous time-dependent components, in series with an inelastic component that accounts for the irreversible processes within the microstructure of the material. Then, a computational scheme was proposed by means of a staggered approach: first a three-dimensional diffusion model was applied to obtain information on the accumulation of moisture within the mixtures and then the elasto-visco-plastic model was used to quantify mortar damage due to moisture diffusion. This method was successfully applied to study the influence of mixture morphology on moisture sensitivity. The results demonstrated that moisture content in a mixture strongly depends on its morphology, whereas the interconnectivity of the voids network controls the rate of damage development. Also, the analysis revealed the positive effect of using binders with high resistivity against moisture and quantified the benefits that would arise due to this choice, especially when designing porous mixtures that have an intrinsic sensitivity to moisture due to their morphological characteristics.
More broadly, frost damage can be classified as part of the moisture damage related mechanisms. In the field, frost damage can be mainly attributed to the expansion of water accumulated in the pores of the pavement at sub-zero temperatures that causes additional stresses to the pavement structure. A numerical scheme to simulate frost damage was proposed. This scheme comprises a model that simulates the volume expansion of water during the water-to-ice phase-change, a thermal conduction model to simulate temperature distribution in the pavement, and the elasto-visco-plastic model to determine critical areas with a propensity to cracking on the basis of the pavement stresses.
In conclusion, this thesis contributes to establishing a relationship of the physico-mechanical properties of the constituent materials and mixture morphology with the moisture susceptibility of pavement structures. The proposed experimental methods and computational models can serve as tools to investigate a great variety of parameters before a pavement structure is actually built. This allows for new materials and mixture designs to be investigated and the risks involved with their use to be minimized.