Fatigue performance of asphalt pavements with highly polymer-modified asphalt binders

The paper briefly discusses traditional asphalt pavements designing methods of designing of asphalt pavements developed in the second half of the 20th century. In comparison, it presents the assumptions and derivations of a modern method based on the simplified viscoelastic continuum damage (S-VECD) model together with its necessary input data. In the second part of the article, structures for two different traffic load categories - heavy traffic and extreme traffic - were analysed. For each traffic load categories two types of constructions were compared - reference construction - made with typical neat asphalt binder in base course and construction with anti-fatigue base layer made with highly polymer modified asphalt binder (HiMA). Fatigue performance of each structure was estimated using two methods - Asphalt Institute method and S-VECD method. Results showed that approach using the Asphalt Institute equations is correct for unmodified asphalt materials, while for the asphalt mixtures with a high elastomer content it generates rather doubtful results. The example presented that it is possible the possibility of to captureing the field performance of HiMA with the S-VECD method.