Abstract
Understanding and replicating the effects of environmental ageing of asphalt pavement surfaces in the field is of significant interest to pavement researchers and practitioners. This is particularly applicable to surface preservation and waste recycling in asphalt mixtures, which have the potential to increase or reduce the life expectancy of surface layers, especially for airport and local road pavements because weather-related fretting and ravelling usually triggers resurfacing. A novel laboratory accelerated asphalt ageing protocol, that combines heat and ultraviolet irradiation, was calibrated to field ageing data extracted from the literature. The aim was to determine the equivalent field ageing duration, represented by the 98-day laboratory ageing protocol. It was concluded that the 98 days of accelerated ageing in the weathering chamber was equivalent to around 20–24 years of field ageing, which was approximately five years longer than for the same temperature and duration in a conventional oven. It was also concluded that a universal field ageing model is unlikely to be found. Rather, future research should focus on establishing a field ageing relationship based on mixture and extracted binder ageing indices, for particular mixture types, and for local climatic conditions.