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This article is related to the development of potholes in bituminous pavements possibly occurring in winter at negative temperature and in presence of pore water in the asphalt concrete (AC) layers. It was shown already that this type of degradation could be due to swelling of the AC pore water. A constitutive law was previously developed to model this phenomenon; the present article deals with its implementation in a finite element (FE) program to evaluate the mechanical effects induced by the propagation of a frost front in a pavement. This novel program handles the coupling between the thermoviscoelastic problem with swelling in AC materials and the heat equation with phase change. First applied to the modelling of characterization tests on partially saturated AC specimens, the developed program has proved to be relevant. Then, to get closer to onsite conditions, an original frost-thaw test was carried out on a bilayer AC structure partially saturated. The test led to the delamination of the two layers during the second frost-thaw cycle. Its modelling showed that the interface rupture was triggered by differential strains and self-stress fields developing in the sample. These results can provide an explanation to the initialisation of the pothole issue.

Finite element modelling of partially saturated asphalt specimens subjected to frost – towards an explanation of winter potholes