Active Mitigation of Low-Temperature Cracking in Asphalt Pavements Quentin Adam, Gerald Englmair, Eyal Levenberg, and Asmus Skar Abstract Asphalt pavements in cold regions are often exposed to low-temperature cracking distress. The driving mechanism for this type of damage is usually an isolated event of fast surface cooling in combination with low-temperature levels. Another common characteristic of pavements in cold regions is the need for salting or mechanical clearing operations (or both) to address ice and snow events. An emerging solution to the latter issue is embedded heating systems—comprising of electric heating elements. These are commonly installed to help melt snow or prevent the accumulation of surface ice. This paper investigated an additional potential benefit of such heating systems—the ability to mitigate the development of low-temperature cracks. Thermomechanical calculations were carried out for an idealized pavement system modeled as a linear viscoelastic half-space. First, simulated winter-weather conditions were imposed to generate a surface crack at some point in time for a pavement without heating. Then after, the simulations were repeated—but with an active heating system. For the case considered, it is found that cracking can be potentially mitigated by the heating system if activated approximately half-an-hour before the time at which crack would occur. Keywords Asphalt pavement · Low-temperature cracking · Embedded electric heating · Linear viscoelasticity 1 Introduction Asphalt pavements in cold regions are often characterized by low-temperature cracking [1]. The driving mechanism for this type of damage is usually an isolated event of fast surface cooling in combination with low-temperature levels. These conditions generate thermally-induced tensile stresses, exceeding the material’s tensile strength—resulting in cracks [2]. Another common characteristic of pave- ments in cold regions is the need for salting or mechanical clearing operations (or Q. Adam · G. Englmair · E. Levenberg (B ) · A. Skar Department of Civil Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark e-mail: eylev@byg.dtu.dk © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 H. Di Benedetto et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the RILEM International Symposium on Bituminous Materials, RILEM Bookseries 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46455-4_23 183