State-of-the-Art Review of Fatigue Damage Mechanics Used in the Area of Asphalt Pavement

Just owing to fatigue damage mechanics' obvious advantages that can reflect the essence of pavement cracking and facilitate the establishment of a connection between pavement performance and pavement structure, environment, and service life, the theory of fatigue damage mechanics has received increasing attention from road experts and scholars, and its application to asphalt pavement has been widely studied. However, current research still reveals problems that require urgent solutions, such as, the fundamentals of fatigue damage theory remain poorly understood, most research results have not yet been summarized, which hinder the development and wide use of fatigue damage theory. Therefore, this work conducts a systematic review of the fundamental content of fatigue damage mechanics and presents the research in the area of asphalt pavement, including the existing problems, some interesting topics that are worthy of further research are also suggested, which include the development of a triaxial damage constitutive model and a new damage evolution model capable of considering the influence of a mixture's viscoelastic characteristics, temperature, and loading rate on the damage evolution feature of the asphalt mixture. In addition, close-form solutions or viscoelastic calculation for asphalt pavement need to be derived, and other efficient large-scale or microscopic numerical methods for modeling pavement damage performance also need to be studied. The goal of the review is to promote the development and progress of fatigue damage mechanics in the area of asphalt pavement.