Testing Methods to Assess Healing Potential of Bituminous Binders

Despite the fact that ability of bituminous materials to heal damage has been largely studied and that a wide literature is available on this topic, there is still no consensus in the research community on actual factors governing healing process and methods to be used to quantitatively asses healing performance of bituminous materials. In such a context, one of the main objectives of the RILEM Technical Committee 278-CHA is to evaluate the different test methods proposed by various research teams to characterize healing in bituminous materials and come up with clear and concise recommendations regarding the evaluation of healing behavior of bituminous materials in the laboratory. To this regard, an inter-laboratory experimental program has been recently started with the specific purpose of testing a common set of selected bituminous binders by using three different protocols. This paper describes the protocols adopted in the experimental program and reports some preliminary results obtained to date.