Development of Three Point Bending Cylinder (3PBC) Asphalt Mixture Fatigue Test System

Fatigue cracking is one of the dominant distress types that a pavement structure experiences throughout its service life.

The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's NCHRP IDEA Final Report for Project 218: Development of Three Point Bending Cylinder (3PBC) Asphalt Mixture Fatigue Test System developed a new test method called the "three-point bending cylinder (3PBC) test." The primary benefit of this test method is that sample preparation and testing times are shorter than typical fatigue tests (auch as four-point bending and uniaxial fatigue) and the test fixture is easy to operate and inexpensive.