Construction and Building Materials 161 (2018) 45–52

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Construction and Building Materials

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat

Investigation into crack healing of asphalt mixtures using healing agents

Martin Riara, Ping Tang, Liantong Mo ⇑, Barugahare Javilla, Shaopeng Wu ⇑
State Key Laboratory of Silicate Materials for Architectures, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China

h i g h l i g h t s

Cracks in asphalt pavements can be healed effectively using healing agents.

Crack healing depends on agent type, healing time and aging of mixture.

Initial healing had the highest contribution to the ultimate healing.

Multiple fracture-rehealing performance is useful in selection of healing agents.

Re-healing performance is sensitive to the drying rate of healing agents.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study investigated the crack healing ability of aged and unaged AC-13 basalt asphalt mixtures using
Received 12 August 2017 five healing agents. Notched semicircular asphalt mixtures were cracked and healed using the healing
Received in revised form 14 November 2017 agents and the recovered critical load at fracture was adopted as a healing indicator. Crack healing
Accepted 15 November 2017
was found to be dependent on the type of healing agent, healing time and aging of mixture. A maximum
Available online 27 November 2017
healing up to 73% was obtained after 8 days of uninterrupted healing. Multiple fracturing-rehealing of the
healed mixture didn’t significantly affect the healing index (HI) of the successive cycles. The re-healing
Keywords:
performance was sensitive to the drying rate of healing agents, and a high drying rate reduced the re-
Asphalt pavements
Maintenance
healing performance. The first day of healing had the highest contribution to the ultimate healing poten-
Healing agents tial, and further increase in the healing duration resulted in a steady increase in healing index. The high
Crack healing healing performance indicated that carefully selected healing agents have the potential to heal cracks in
asphalt pavements.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction riorated. Maintenance is either preventive, corrective or a total

Asphalt mixtures are the most common pavement construction
materials worldwide and their basic structures comprise of graded
aggregates and fillers bound by an asphalt binder. The aggregates
form the structural backbone of the pavement while the asphalt
binder acts as an adhesive to maintain the aggregates in their rel-
ative positions [1]. Deterioration of the asphalt binder during its
service life is inevitable considering that asphalt pavements expe-
rience harsh environmental and loading conditions which include:
thermal and UV aging, traffic loading and moisture damage [2–5].
Asphalt pavement maintenance has recently attracted a lot of
attention especially in China where most expressways have been
in service for a long period of time and their performance has dete-
⇑ Corresponding authors at: Room 517, Concrete Building, State Key Laboratory of
Silicate Materials for Architectures, Wuhan University of Technology, Luoshi Road
122, Wuhan 430070, China (L. Mo).
E-mail addresses: molt@whut.edu.cn (L. Mo), wusp@whut.edu.cn (S. Wu).
reconstruction process [6]. The latter is capital intensive whereas
preventive and corrective measures are considered the most
economical.
Recently, some researchers have developed an innovative tech-
nology towards preventive maintenance of asphalt pavements.
Radio or microwave electromagnetic radiations were used to
induce a heating effect in steel fiber reinforced asphalt pavements.
Using this technology, successful healing of cracks in mastic and
asphalt mixtures was reported [7–10]. Laboratory cracked mastic
and porous asphalt concrete beams could recover almost 80% of
their initial fracture strengths [8,11]. Induction heating technology
is still in its trial stages, and most asphalt pavements currently are
not steel fiber reinforced to guarantee successful implementation
of this technology in healing. Most road engineers still rely on seal-
ing technologies for preventive maintenance purposes.
Chip seals, fog seals and micro-surfacing technologies have
been practiced since the 1970s. Initially, these technologies
focused on treating emerging cracks through ‘filling’. This was con-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2017.11.074
0950-0618/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
46 M. Riara et al. / Construction and Building Materials 161 (2018) 45–52
sidered a good procedure for minimizing the emergence of new
cracks and inhibiting the growth of already formed micro cracks.
In cases where macro cracks were formed, crack filling using hot
or cold poured crack sealants was a common practice [12]. Crack
sealants however often fail due to the weak adhesion with the
cracked surfaces. The proposed current research direction is
focused on sealants that go beyond mere sealing of cracks to heal-
ing and rejuvenation of bitumen in the neighborhood of the
cracked surfaces. As a result, microcapsules which rapture under
stress and release rejuvenators that diffuse into the micro cracks
have been proposed [13,14]. The rejuvenators held in the micro-
capsules dissolve the bitumen to increase its flow and healing
capacity [15].
Rejuvenator seals have been used to improve the viscosity, pen-
etration and ductility of aged asphalt binders in both asphalt road
and airfield pavements [16–19]. For instance, Zhu et al. (2017) used
bio-binder/plasticizer based rejuvenator materials to improve the
workability and rutting resistance of laboratory long-term aged
asphalt binders [20]. Component analysis demonstrated that the
bio-rejuvenators were effective in restoring the content of the
medium and light weight molecular components lost during the
aging process. The functional role of the rejuvenators is to increase
the aromatic content in the aged mixture and also increase the
ratio of small molecules to large molecules. Sun and coworkers
found out that a higher small molecule content/large molecular
content ratio, higher aromatics content and a higher short-
branched chains promotes healing [21]. Use of rejuvenators has
also been favored because they are thermally stable and become
active during pavement loading to provide self-healing to the
pavement [22].
While a lot of research has been done on the rejuvenation effect
of aged asphalt binders using rejuvenators, little has been explored
on the ability of these agents to heal cracks within the asphalt
pavement. Improvement in the adhesive zone is expected to result
in asphalt mixtures with improved performance and extended ser-
vice life [23,24]. The objective of this research was to study the
crack healing performance of rejuvenating/healing materials in
aged asphalt mixtures. Five crack healing materials were used to
heal cracked semicircular asphalt mixture samples. The ability of
these healing agents to reheal cracks after multiple fracturing-
rehealing was also investigated. Further still, the effect of aging
on cracking, healing and rehealing effect was also evaluated.
2. Materials and experimental program
2.1. Materials
AC-13 basalt asphalt mixture that is widely applied for surface course was
designed for this study. The number 13 denoted the nominal maximum aggregate
size according to Chinese standard JTG E20-2011 [25]. The basic properties of the
basalt aggregates were: crushed stone value of 12%, Los Angeles abrasion value of
7.8%, Flakiness and elongation index of 12.5% and specific gravity of 2.961 g/cm3.
Table 1 shows the gradation of the basalt aggregates. Limestone powder with a den-
sity of 2.83 g/cm3 was used as the mineral filler. Its main chemical compounds were
Table 1
Aggregate gradation used to prepare asphalt mixtures.
Sieve size (mm) Specification (%) Designed gradation (%)
16 100 100
13.2 90–100 95.1
9.5 68–85 76.5
4.75 38–68 53.2
2.36 24–50 37.1
1.18 15–38 26.5
0.6 10–28 19.2
0.3 7–20 13.5
0.15 5–15 9.9
0.075 4–8 5.8
51.8% CaO, 3.49% SiO2 and 1.29% Al2O3. SBS modified asphalt was used as the binder
for mixtures and its optimum asphalt content was determined as 4.9% based on the
Marshall design method with specimens compacted with 75 blows per face. This
binder had a penetration value of 73 dmm, viscosity of 0.645 Pas at 135 °C, ductil-
ity of 52.1 at 5 °C and softening point of 68 °C.
Five healing agents were used for this work. Three of the agents; HA-1, HA-2,
and HA-3 were commercial pavement maintenance agents, whose ingredients are
the subject of a pending Chinese patent [26]. BBE and SBRE were base asphalt emul-
sion and SBR modified asphalt emulsion respectively. All of the five agents are catio-
nic emulsion with a residue larger than 50%. Table 2 shows the chemical
composition of the residue of the five agents by means of thin-layer chromatogra-
phy [27] and the viscosity of emulsions and their residue at 25 and 60 °C respec-
tively. The chemical composition presented in Table 2 indicates that HA-1, HA-2
and HA-3 are maltene based emulsion with high content of aromatics, which is
reported to be of importance for the self-healing of asphalt [20]. Unlike standard
asphalt emulsion of BBE and SBRE, the residue of the other three agents are very oily
and sticky. BBE and SBRE met the related technical requirements on PC-1 base
asphalt emulsion (BBE) and PCR modified asphalt emulsion according to Technical
Specification for Construction of Highway Asphalt Pavements (JTG F40-2004) [28].
2.2. Aging procedure
Effects of AC-13 mixture aging on crack healing were considered in this study.
Three categories of test samples namely unaged (UA), short term aged (STA) and
long term aged (LTA) were prepared. As for STA mixtures, loose mixtures were
spread on a metallic pan to a height of 50 mm and then placed in a force draft oven
at 135 °C for 4 h. The samples were stirred after every 1 h. This process simulated
asphalt aging process in the field from the time of mixing to compaction. LTA sam-
ples were prepared by placing STA compacted samples in an oven at 85 °C for 5
days. This procedure simulated about 5 years of field aging [29]. Both aging pro-
cesses were conducted according to AASHTO R30 [30].
2.3. Sample preparation
A semicircular bending test (SCB) was adopted to evaluate the fracture resis-
tance of the asphalt mixtures before and after the healing process. This test is com-
monly used to evaluate the healing potential of asphalt mixtures in the laboratory
[10,31]. To make SCB test samples, a Superpave gyratory compactor model Troxler-
4140, USA was used for compacting samples to an Ndesign of 75 gyrations at a target
air void of 4 ± 0.5%. The samples were cored to a diameter of 100 mm and then
sliced into discs each with a thickness of 25 mm as specified in AASHTO TP105
[32]. The discs were then cut into two halves. A notch, 10 mm deep and 4 mm thick
was cut at the midpoint along the loading direction as shown in Fig. 1.
2.4. Semi circular bending test
A universal testing machine (UTM-25) was used to carry out SCB testing on the
fabricated samples. Before testing, all the samples were preconditioned in the tem-
perature chamber at 10 °C for 4 h. This temperature was chosen to avoid any
creep deformation and to create a brittle fracture on the samples [10,12,35]. The
samples were loaded at the rate of 0.5 mm/min. The load and vertical displacement
were recorded automatically by the control system. Once the sample was com-
pletely broken, it was preconditioned in ambient room temperature for 2 h in order
to allow the temperature of the samples to rise to about 25 °C. This was done to
ensure that all the moisture that had condensed on the surface of the sample due
to freezing, dried completely. The stiffness of the mixtures was evaluated from
the linear region of the load-displacement curve. Fracture energy (Ef) was calcu-
lated according to Eq. (1).
Wf
Ef ¼ ð1Þ
Alig
Ligament area (Alig) is the area of the crack face evaluated according to Eq. (2).
Alig ¼ ðr  aÞt ð2Þ
where a, r and t are the specimen’s crack length, radius and thickness respectively.
Work of fracture (wf) was computed from area under the load-displacement curve
according to Eq. (3).
X
n
1
Wf ¼ ðF iþ1 þ F i Þðdiþ1  di Þ ð3Þ
i
2
where di is the displacement at the ith position when the loading force is Fi.
2.5. Application of the crack healing agents
A soft brush was used to apply the crack healing agents on the cracked faces.
Different spreading rates were adopted for different agents in order to avoid exces-
sive bleeding of the agents due to their differences in viscosity and residue content.
After several trial tests on identical samples, a spreading rate of 0.7, 0.6, 0.4, 0.5 and
 M. Riara et al. / Construction and Building Materials 161 (2018) 45–52 47

Table 2
Viscosity and chemical composition of healing agents (%).

Healing Agent Chemical composition Viscosity (Pas)

Saturates Aromatics Resins Asphaltenes Residue at 60 °C Emulsion at 25 °C
HA-1 22.1 58.9 10.4 8.6 15–20 160–180
HA-2 18.1 48.6 22.2 11.1 140–160 50–70
HA-3 12.2 70.1 11.2 6.5 100–120 45–65
BBE 14.1 29.6 43.5 12.8 210–230 150–170
SBRE 13.4 25.8 49.3 11.5 700–900 40–60

Fig. 1. Semi-circular bending test set up (a) and failure surfaces of the sample (b).

0.4 kg/m2 for HA-1, HA-2, HA-3, BBE and SBRE respectively was found the most UA, STA and LTA specimens and all the healing agents except for specimens tested
appropriate. Once the agents were applied, the samples were carefully placed after 30 days. The extent of healing for each asphalt mixture and for each cycle was
together and allowed to heal at ambient temperature (about 25 °C). They were then defined by the healing index (HI) calculated using Eq. (4).
stored in a direction normal to the cracked surface so that the weight of the upper
Fh
half of the sample would squeeze out any excessive healing agent. Five different HI ¼  100 ð4Þ
groups of samples were prepared and tested after 1, 2, 4, 8 and 30 days. Each group
Fo
had 15 samples for UA, STA and LTA sets. Samples tested after 1 and 2 days were where Fh is the critical load at fracture after healing and Fo is the initial critical load
used to evaluate the short term healing effect while those tested after 4, 8 and at fracture.
30 days were used to evaluate the long term healing effect of the agents. At least
three samples were prepared for each test and a total of over 180 samples were
tested. 3. Results and discussions

3.1. Effect of aging on the fracture behavior of asphalt mixtures

2.6. Evaporation test of the crack healing materials
The typical load-displacement behavior of aged and unaged
The evaporation potential of the healing agents was investigated by examining
(UA) notched specimens is shown in Fig. 2. It was noted from
the rate of mass loss over time. Crack healing agents were applied on cracked sur-
faces at the same rate as in Section 2.5. The sample mass was measured to an accu- Fig. 1b that fracture occurred due to a cohesive failure at the inter-
racy of ±0.001 g every day for the first 5 days and then on the 7th day. This test was
used to explore the drying rate of the healing agents due to exposure to ambient
conditions. It was also used to evaluate the hardness of the healing agent’s residue
after exposure to ambient conditions for different durations of time.

2.7. Fracture-rehealing tests

The treated cracks of asphalt pavements are usually subjected to repeated traf-
fic loadings. This requires that the healing agent remain resilient to resist the com-
plex crack movements and have a strong re-healing potential once a healed crack
opens. For this reason, fracture-rehealing test was carried out to evaluate the re-
healing ability of a treated crack after multiple fracturing-rehealing cycles. This test
was carried in the following stages: firstly, the initial cracking of the sample was
done and the healing agents were applied to heal the crack as explained in Sec-
tion 2.5. After the specified healing time, the cracking test was carried out. This
was designated as cycle 1. The samples were then preconditioned without applying
the agent and tested after a duration equivalent to that of the first cycle. This was
labelled as the cycle 2. In the same manner, the third and fourth cycles were carried
out. For example, the first cycle of the 1 day samples was tested a day after appli-
cation of the agents. The second cycle was tested a day after the first cycle and so
on. The crack healing agents were only applied on the samples once, and that is
after the initial cracking. A total of 4 cycles were carried out for all specimens: Fig. 2. Load displacement behavior for UA, STA and LTA mixtures.
48 M. Riara et al. / Construction and Building Materials 161 (2018) 45–52
face between aggregates and mortar. Cracked aggregates were
hardly observed. The load displacement was linear between 0.3
kN and the critical load at fracture. After the peak load at fracture,
the decay rate for LTA mixtures was highest followed by STA mix-
tures and lastly unaged samples. This was attributed to the ability
of the unaged samples to store more fracture energy than the aged
samples. After aging, the fracture energy of tested sample is low
and it behaves in a quasi-brittle manner. Fig. 3 shows the stiffness,
fracture energy and the critical load at failure for aged and unaged
samples. The data reported in Fig. 3 is the average of 30 test sam-
ples. In total over 180 specimens were done on UA, STA and LTA
mixtures.
From Fig. 3, the stiffness and the critical load at fracture of the
mixtures increased with aging, while the fracture energy reduced.
There was a significant difference between the properties of LTA
and STA samples as compared to UA samples. The difference in
stiffness, fracture energy and critical load at fracture between the
LTA and UA was 0.68 kN/mm, 0.87 J/mm2 and 0.58 kN respectively
while the difference in the same properties between STA and UA
mixtures was 0.16 kN/mm, 0.27 J/mm2 and 0.09 kN. This could
indicate that the long-term aging procedure as specified in
AASHTO R30 has a very significant effect on the mixtures. As stated
earlier, aging has a hardening effect on bitumen. Thus, aged mix-
tures had the highest load at fracture but once the crack was initi-
ated, it propagated rapidly within the fracture zone. It was the high
rate of crack propagation that reduced the fracture energy consid-
erably as noted from Fig. 3. The stiffening trend also increased with
aging, however, short term aging was not severe. Therefore, the
STA specimens had a stiffness closer to UA samples, while LTA
specimens showed a distinct increase on stiffness.
3.2. Evaporation of crack healing materials
Fig. 4 shows the variation of weight of the crack healing mate-
rials when exposed to an ambient environment at 25 °C. The
weight of all the healing materials reduced with increase in time
of exposure. The rate of weight loss was highest in the first three
days, after which all materials generally formed a plateau. Weight
loss could be attributed to the evaporation of water and other vola-
tile components present in the healing materials. The rate of
weight loss decreased with time due to the reduction in the con-
centration of the volatiles present in the healing agents. SBRE
shows the highest drying rate within the first two days while
BBE had the lowest residue mass after 3 days of exposure. HA-1
had the lowest drying rate and its residue mass was highest after
7 days of exposure. The variation in drying rate was hypothesized
Fig. 3. Stiffness, fracture energy and critical load at failure for UA, STA and LTA
mixtures.
Fig. 4. Weight variation of healing agents over time.
to have an effect on the healing and rehealing performance of the
agents. It is expected that a drier residue would have a higher vis-
cosity, and hence a higher activation energy would be needed to
wet the cracked faces during healing.
3.3. Effect of healing time on the performance of unaged and aged
asphalt mixtures
Fig. 5a–c shows the healing indices of UA, STA and LTA mixtures
after 1, 2, 4, 8 and 30 days of healing. The strength recovery for
samples healed without any healing agents was very low. For
instance, after 1 day of healing the HI of was 2.53, 0.51 and
0.55%, and after 8 days of healing the HI was 3.32, 2.82 and
2.24% for UA, STA and LTA samples respectively. UA, STA and LTA
samples healed with healing agents showed on average a healing
rate of 35.2, 36.8, and 32.0% respectively within the first day of
healing. As the duration of healing increased, all agents and all sets
of samples showed a remarkable increase in healing rate. There
was a slight difference between the HI recorded after 8 days and
the HI after 30 days especially for the UA mixtures. This showed
that after some time, the healing process reached an optimum
and further healing was limited. After 30 days of healing, HA-3
showed a consistent highest HI of 77, 66 and 64% for UA, STA
and LTA mixtures respectively. For the same period of healing,
SBRE showed a consistent lowest HI of 63, 55, and 54% for UA,
STA and LTA mixtures respectively. All agents except HA-1 had a
HI above 50% for UA mixtures after 4 days of healing. In Fig. 5
HA-3 displayed the highest healing rate of 73.1% for UA samples
and 53% for LTA samples after 8 days of healing. It was interesting
to note that the healing rate increased faster beyond the first two
days of healing for the UA samples. As an example, the average
HI for HA-1, HA-2, HA-3, BBE and SBRE was 37.4, 38.4, 38.9, 39.9
and 34.1% respectively for the first two days of healing. After 8
days, the HI reached 57.6, 68.6, 73.1, 67.8 and 58.2% respectively.
It was hypothesized that the healing performance after 4 days
was as a result of drying and hardening of the agents while the
healing recorded in the first 2 days was diffusion driven. This
observation was consistent with those in Fig. 4, where 4 days were
shown to be sufficient for the healing agents to dry and attain a
constant weight. However, further research on the diffusion of
these agents will be conducted in the next phase of the ongoing
project.
These results showed that the healing agents could induce sig-
nificant healing in asphalt pavements. More significantly, the HI
 M. Riara et al. / Construction and Building Materials 161 (2018) 45–52
Fig. 5. The healing performance of healing agents in the first cycle after different
healing times for UA (a), STA (b) and LTA (c) mixtures.
achieved after 8 days of healing was comparable to that achieved
when induction heating was used on steel fiber reinforced asphalt
mixtures. Besides high HI, the healing agents also had an advan-
tage on the ease and convenience of application, which makes
them promising and practical for use in asphalt pavement mainte-
nance industry.
Fig. 6 shows the percentage contribution of the first day of heal-
ing to the HI at 8 days. UA samples showed a lower gain in HI in the
first day while aged samples recorded a much higher gain. HA-1,
HA-2 and HA-3 showed a higher HI compared to traditional bitu-
49
Fig. 6. Percentage contribution of the first day of healing to the total healing at 8
days.
men emulsions (BBE and SBRE). Generally, aging led to an increase
in the asphaltene content due to the conversion of the oily phase
(aromatics and saturates) to the peptized phase (resins and
asphaltenes) [3,14,33]. Aromatics formed the bulk component of
most rejuvenators and crack healing materials [34]. Due to the
aging process, a concentration gradient of the aromatic compo-
nents was created between the aged mixtures and the crack heal-
ing material. As a result, rapid diffusion of the agents into the
microcracks in the neighborhood of a cracked surface was higher
for aged mixtures than for the UA mixtures. As expected, this con-
centration gradient was higher for LTA than STA mixtures.
3.4. Performance of healing agents under multiple-fracturing
Fig. 7 shows the healing index (HI) of asphalt mixtures that
have been fractured severally and healed using various healing
agents. This process was considered to roughly simulate the multi-
ple fracturing-rehealing process that would occur in real pave-
ments. No data could be obtained for samples healed without
healing agents as the samples did not show any healing after the
first cycle. Fig. 7a and b shows the results of UA and LTA samples
tested every 1 day of uninterrupted healing for four times (1 cycle
equaled 1 day). It should be noted that the healing agents were
applied only on the first cycle. After 4 fracture-reheal cycles, the
healing index calculated was between 30–55% for UA mixtures
and 25–55% for LTA mixtures. The gain in HI was highest in the sec-
ond cycle and slowed down in the final cycles. Apart from HA-3,
the gain in HI was insignificant after the second cycle. For UA mix-
tures, HA-3 showed the highest gain of 15% in HI in the four cycles
while BBE showed the lowest gain in HI of about 3.5%. This trend
was conserved for LTA mixtures where HA-1 showed the highest
gain of 18% while SBRE showed the lowest gain of about 3.5%.
Table 3 shows a summary of the rehealing performance of UA
and LTA samples after 2, 4 and 8 days of healing. The effect of mul-
tiple fracturing on the rehealing performance of the mixtures is
clear from Fig. 7 and Table 3. For instance, considering the
fracturing-rehealing performance of UA specimens using HA-3, it
was seen that the healing index recorded during these fracture-
reheal cycles ranged from 37 to 73%. The gain in HI was highest
for samples tested after every 1-day cycle. Samples tested after
every 4 days of healing showed a relatively stable HI, while sam-
ples tested every after 8 days of uninterrupted healing showed a
slight decrease in HI, except for HA-1, which showed a higher gain
in HI.
50 M. Riara et al. / Construction and Building Materials 161 (2018) 45–52

Fig. 7. Rehealing performance of UA (a) and LTA (b) mixtures after 1-day of healing.
During the healing process, diffusion and drying of the agents
occurred simultaneously. Diffusion is concentration driven, there-
fore, it occurred at a higher rate in the initial days of healing. Sam-
ples refractured after 1 or 2 days showed a higher HI in the
successive cycle. This could be explained by the following two rea-
sons. First, during the rehealing process, diffusion of the agents
across the contact faces was much faster because the viscosity of
the agents was still low. Due to the low viscosity, the cracked faces
could wet much faster since the activation energy for the wetting
process was lower. Secondly, the concentration gradient between
the components of the binder and the agents was still high. To
attain an equilibrium, diffusion would proceed albeit at a slower
pace. After 4 days of healing, the cracked regions had attained a
concentration equilibrium. When these samples are rehealed, fur-
ther healing would be insignificant and only due to healing of the
residue of the emulsions.
The HI of UA mixtures using HA-3 was between 38–54, 54–58
and 73–67, for 1, 4 and 8 day fracture-reheal cycles. This indicated
that crack healing occurred over a long period of time. Therefore,
uninterrupted healing could be of importance to achieve maxi-
mum healing. Traditional asphalt emulsion like BBE and SBRE tend
to harden and dry out, hence, both did not perform well during the
fracture-rehealing testing. In major roads where there is need to
open the pavement to traffic flow immediately, HA-3 would be
the best choice because interruptions to the healing process has
a minimal effect on the ultimate healing. In addition, the healing
performance of HA-3 was very similar for both UA and LTA mix-
tures especially in the duration below 4 days of healing. Therefore,
this healing agent could be used to heal cracks in pavements which
have been in service for a long time (long-term aged pavements).
The healing performance of mixtures with a total healing dura-
tion of 4 days were compared to give an insight on the effect of
interruptions on the healing process. Table 4 shows the HI of the
4th cycle for samples fractured every day (1 d cycle 4) and the HI
of the 1st cycle for samples tested after 4 days of uninterrupted
healing (4 day cycle 1). It’s important to note that both sets have
a total healing duration of 4 days. The performance of all the agents
was affected negatively by intermediate interruptions. HA-3
showed the lowest difference of 1.1% while BBE showed the high-
est difference of 14.3% between the uninterrupted and interrupted
healing processes. The interruption effect was more severe for
agents with a higher drying rate (BBE and SBRE) than those with
a lower drying rate. Although rapid drying would be desirable for
crack healing agents, especially those designed for pavements that
require fast opening, the re-healing performance was sensitive to
drying rate. Based only on the drying rates of the healing agents,
it would be expected that HA-1 would show the least effect due
to interruptions. However, HA-3 and HA-2 showed a much better
performance despite their higher drying rate. Therefore, drying
rate is not an appropriate parameter to use while selecting an
appropriate crack healing agents. The use of multiple fracturing-

Table 3
Rehealing performance of UA and LTA mixtures after 2, 4 and 8 days of healing.

Healing Agent Healing time Cycles

(days)
Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Cycle 3 Cycle 4
UA LTA UA LTA UA LTA UA LTA
HA-1 2 37.6 40.8 37.1 36.6 48.2 41.2 52.4 48.9
4 45.5 45.6 49.3 48.5 51.8 48.6 52.4 50.7
8 57.6 45.3 62.4 54.3 64.6 56.3 58.5 53.4
HA-2 2 39.3 38.5 40.2 39.8 46.5 43.8 47.3 40.0
4 53.6 51.2 58.3 52.1 58.5 60.2 64.9 65.9
8 68.6 53.1 68.6 56.7 64.7 55.7 62.7 51.1
HA-3 2 40.1 37.3 48.5 47.5 55.5 49.6 57.9 49.8
4 54.0 48.7 51.8 54.0 54.2 53.4 58.0 61.4
8 73.1 51.4 70.0 53.2 68.8 51.3 67.4 50.3
BBE 2 47.5 41.7 46.2 42.7 47.1 46.7 50.7 43.4
4 50.1 45.7 49.8 49.7 52.1 50.3 53.6 52.2
8 67.8 53.4 67.0 48.8 65.6 48.5 64.5 49.3
SBRE 2 37.4 43.5 39.3 45.0 46.6 45.1 48.1 46.8
4 47.0 45.7 53.1 51.7 53.9 51.2 54.3 56.2
8 58.2 51.0 59.6 46.3 55.7 50.1 55.5 49.6
 M. Riara et al. / Construction and Building Materials 161 (2018) 45–52
Table 4
A comparison of healing performance in cycle 4 of samples healed for 1 day and cycle
1 of samples healed for 4 days of UA mixtures.
Healing Agent 1 d cycle 4 4 d cycle 1
HA-1 41.2 45.5
HA-2 48.6 53.6
HA-3 52.9 54.0
BBE 36.3 50.1
SBRE 36.0 47.0
rehealing performance while selecting a healing agent is recom-
mended. For heavy traffic pavements where multiple fracturing-
rehealing is expected, the selected healing agent should show a
minimal effect on HI when the healing process is interrupted sev-
erally. Conversely, for parking lots, light traffic pavements and for
pavements being prepared for a surface overlay layer, choice of
agents with a high HI and moderate multiple fracturing-
rehealing performance is recommended.
4. Conclusions
Five healing agents were used for healing cracks in AC-13 basalt
asphalt mixtures. Their ability to reheal cracks after multiple frac-
turing was investigated. In addition, the effect of aging on the
cracking, healing and rehealing performance of asphalt mixtures
using the proposed healing agents was examined. The recovered
critical load value at fracture was adopted as a healing index. Based
on the experimental findings, the following conclusions were
made:
(i) Aging on AC-13 asphalt mixture led to increased stiffness
and critical load at fracture, but reduced the fracture energy
of asphalt mixtures. Long-term aging affected significantly
the crack propagation which is indicated by the rapid decay
of the load displacement curves.
(ii) Fractured asphalt concrete could be healed using crack heal-
ing agents. Healing index was dependent on type of agent,
healing duration and aging of the mixture. The recovery on
the critical load at fracture varied from 25% to 77%. This indi-
cated that carefully selected healing agents could have the
potential to heal cracks in asphalt pavements. It also implied
that the heal and seal method could be promising for the
maintenance of asphalt pavements.
(iii) The re-healing performance was found to be sensitive to the
drying rate of healing agents. A higher drying rate reduced
the healing performance of mixtures under multiple
fracturing.
(iv) The first day of healing had the highest contribution to the
ultimate HI of asphalt mixtures. As the duration of healing
increased, both aged and unaged mixtures showed an
increase in the healing rate. This indicated that initial diffu-
sion was more important compared to the drying and hard-
ening of the agents.
(v) A 35–73% healing index (HI) was obtained during multi-
fracture-rehealing cycles. Extending the duration for
fracture-rehealing cycle reduced the rehealing effect. This
became distinct for BBE and SBRE after drying and harden-
ing. It indicated that the traditional BBE and SBRE emulsion
were not suitable for crack healing. Active components in
the healing agents were decisive for the rehealing effect.
Therefore, multiple fracturing-rehealing cycle test is helpful
for sieving healing agents with a stable HI for crack
treatment.
51
Acknowledgements
Financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (No. U1733121) and the China Scholarship Council is
acknowledged. The authors are grateful for the cooperation
between the People’s Republic of China and the Government of
Kenya and express their desire to see a prolonged and stronger
cooperation between the two states.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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