Viennese Ageing Procedure (VAPro): adaptions and further development to address low-temperature performance of aged asphalt mixtures

As for all organic material, bitumen is prone to ageing under atmospheric conditions. This ageing process changes the properties of materials as it becomes stiffer and more brittle over time. This leads to a deterioration of low-temperature and fatigue performance and limits the life span of road pavements. On asphalt mix scale, various ageing methods have been developed in the past decades. A lately developed method, Viennese Ageing Procedure (VAPro), conditions specimens using a gas mixture containing traces of reactive oxygen species (ROS). This paper presents improvements of the initial device and the development of a new cell for ageing prismatic specimens for low-temperature testing. Cooling tests were conducted to the show proof of principle of the new ageing cell in comparison to field-aged samples. With the VAPro method at hand, asphalt mixtures can be optimised in terms of their long-term performance including relevant impacts of ageing on the performance.