Four Point Bending

Cracking is recognized as one of the main causes of pavement deterioration, and is the primary cause of the need for maintenance and rehabilitation. Researchers around the world are working on the problem of cracking in asphalt pavements, with the goal of developing better understanding of the mechanics of cracking, creating test methods for assessing the risk of cracking for different materials and designs, and implementing these results into improved design methods and specifications. This Third Conference on Four-point bending held at the University of California, Davis, USA, follows two successful previous conferences, held at the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, in 2007, and at the University of Minho, Portugal in 2009. The primary objective of these conferences is to provide an exchange of ideas and experience and to disseminate that knowledge among researchers, government and private agencies and consultants, about the use of the four-point bending test to evaluate stiffness and fatigue resistance of bituminous mixtures. These proceedings include 23 papers from 15 countries that have been subjected to peer review by a scientific committee composed of experts in asphalt materials, design and testing. Themes of the papers cover a range of topics, including modelling of the four-point beam test, applications to mechanistic design, asphaltic materials evaluation, comparisons with other tests and non-asphaltic materials evaluation.Four Point Bending is of interest to academics and professionals interested in pavement engineering.

John Harvey University of California, Davis, USA. Jorge Carvalho Pais (University of Minho, Guimares, Portugal