Viscoelastic constitutive modeling of asphalt concrete with growing damage

This paper presents a mechanistic approach to uniaxial viscoelastic constitutive modeling of asphalt concrete that accounts for damage evolution under cyclic loading conditions. An elasticviscoelastic correspondence principle in terms of pseudo variables is applied to separately evaluate viscoelasticity and time-dependent damage growth in asphalt concrete. The time-dependent damage growth in asphalt concrete is modeled by using a damage parameter based on a generalization of microcrack growth law. Internal state variables that describe the hysteretic behavior of asphalt concrete are determined. A constitutive equation in terms of stress and pseudo strain is first established for controlled-strain mode and then transformed to a controlled-stress constitutive equation by simply replacing physical stress and pseudo strain with pseudo stress and physical strain. Tensile uniaxial fatigue tests are performed under the controlled-strain mode to determine model parameters. The constitutive equations in terms of pseudo strain and pseudo stress satisfactorily predict the constitutive behavior of asphalt concrete all the way up to failure under controlled-strain and -stress modes, respectively.