Comparison of the rheological and the thermal behaviour of a neat asphalt binder and a wood-based binder for pavement surface layer

The decrease of crude oil availability, typically used to produce asphalt binders, is a concern among the pavement materials researchers. Binders from alternative sources have been studied as total or partial replacement of asphalt binder in asphalt mixtures more intensively in the past decade. However, the characterisation of these new materials, in order to determine how their properties affect the mixture performance, remains a challenge. This paper presents a comparison between one neat asphalt binder and a bio-binder from renewable resource (for 100% replacement of the asphalt binder), in terms of the linear viscoelastic characterisation, permanent deformation susceptibility, fatigue resistance and thermo-gravimetric characterisation. Results show that the bio-binder studied presents similar behaviour in terms of stiffness and permanent deformation susceptibility to the neat asphalt binder, that was taken as the reference for wearing course pavement layer application. Nevertheless, in terms of fatigue life, the bio-binder showed lower performance.