Recovered binders from a Swiss long term pavement performance
(LTPP) study have been investigated with dynamic shear and bending
beam rheometer to evaluate whether superpave binder tests reflect
LTPP better than traditional tests. In addition, tests were performed
to quantify changes that may occur due to long-term storage at
room temperature. The results show that the new superpave binder
tests are valuable tools to assess binders from old pavements
but should be further analyzed, for example, by master curves
and Black diagrams. It was found that on a large scale basis superpave
binder tests lead to a ranking similar to traditional tests, especially
for warm temperature characteristics. As, on the other hand, traditional
tests are often the only link to original pavement data, this
type of tests should still be performed in parallel for LTPP studies.
Finally, it was found that long-term storage may reduce the penetration
considerably.