To study the stress-strain behaviour of asphalt concrete mixtures two-dimensional numerical experiments on a heterogeneous structure of an asphalt concrete mixture were performed using a finite element method. In these numerical simulations the aggregate grains were represented as infinite rigid grains. For the bituminous matrix a general visco-elasto-plastic model has been implemented. The numerical results were compared with available data from cyclic creep testing and static creep testing. Though the finite element program is a pilot version, the results are encouraging and clearly show the potential of this program to study the stress-strain behaviour of asphalt mixtures. (A)
Samenvatting