New approach for characterising the performance of asphalt binders through the multiple stress creep and recovery test

The Multiple Stress Creep and Recovery (MSCR) test is widely used to analyse the mechanical performance of asphalt binders. It has commonly been used to analyse resistance to permanent deformations and identify and quantify how the polymer is working in the binder. However, this test also offers other useful information that can be studied to provide a better understanding of the mechanical performance of asphalt binders. This paper presents a new approach that analyses binder performance in terms of mechanical loads, thermal gradients, ageing and low temperatures, based on the results obtained from the MSCR test. For this purpose, several parameters and indexes are defined to characterise the response of asphalt binders. To evaluate the potential of this new approach, a research study was carried out with ten different binders (neat and modified) and three types of bituminous mixtures. The indexes obtained from binder performance show a strong correlation with the performance of bituminous binders against the main distresses that appear in road pavements, thus providing an efficient tool for selecting the most appropriate asphalt binder to use under certain traffic and climatic conditions.