5th Eurasphalt & Eurobitume Congress, 13-15th June 2012, Istanbul P5EE-327 THE INDIRECT TENSILE TEST CONFIGURATION IN THE DETERMINATION OF THE COMPLEX MODULUS OF ASPHALT MIXTURES Fernando Oscar Martinez, Silvia Maria Angelone Road Laboratory, School of Engineering, University of Rosario, Rosario, Argentina ABSTRACT The indirect tensile test using repeated load pulses with rest periods has been extensively used for the determination of the stiffness of asphalt mixtures. The main advantage of the indirect tensile test configuration is that can accommodate cylindrical samples compacted in the laboratory or specimens taken by coring from in service pavements. However, in linear elastic or viscoelastic multi-layer calculations, as in pavement design procedures based on mechanistic principles, is the absolute value of the complex modulus |E*| used as input value for the asphalt layers. This paper presents the determination of the absolute value of the complex modulus |E*| and the phase angle using the indirect tensile mode with sinusoidal loads. The viscoelastic solution for the indirect tensile test with sinusoidal loads is presented and, to verify it, tests at different temperatures and frequencies were conducted on asphalt mixtures commonly used in Argentina. The obtained |E*| and phase angle results were compared with those obtained from tests using axial compression at the same frequencies and temperatures. Very well agreement was found between both sets of tests. Also, the |E*| mastercurves and shift factors derived from the two methods are in good agreement. It could be concluded that the indirect tensile test with sinusoidal loads may be used as a standard test and analysis protocol to obtain fundamental rheological properties of asphalt mixtures, particularly in forensic analysis with specimens obtained by coring. Keywords: Asphalt mixtures, complex modulus, phase angle, indirect tensile test