AccScience Publishing / AJWEP / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/AJWEP025010399
ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Multi-scale mechanisms affecting fatigue properties of warm-mix recycled asphalt mixtures in Asian road engineering: Effects of freeze–thaw cycles and environmental synergies

Yu Wang1,2 Jiangsan Hu3*
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1 Equipment Material Technology Center, Inner Mongolia Electric Power Research Institute, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Power (Group) Co., Ltd., Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China
2 Department of Hydraulic Engineering, College of Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, Hubei, China
3 Department of Road and Bridge Engineering, College of Energy and Transportation Engineering, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China
Received: 31 December 2025 | Revised: 12 January 2026 | Accepted: 14 January 2026 | Published online: 29 April 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Asia—one of the world’s most densely populated regions—faces pressures from water scarcity, industrial pollution, and the environmental demands of infrastructure construction. Reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) technology, combined with warm-mix (WM) technology, is a key pathway toward achieving low-carbon road engineering and reducing resource consumption. However, research on the environmental adaptability of these technologies under Asian climatic conditions (e.g., frequent freeze–thaw cycles and prevalent salt-corrosion environments) remains insufficient. This study focuses on WM recycled asphalt mixtures (WMRAM) and innovatively introduces WM recycled asphalt mortar (WMRAMO) as the core medium. Using fatigue tests on WM recycled asphalt (WMRA), WMRAMO, and WMRAM and damage-mechanics indices, we systematically analyzed the effects of typical Asian environmental factors (freeze–thaw cycles, salt solution concentration) on fatigue performance. Results showed that under optimal WM recycling processes, WMRAM’s fatigue performance outperformed traditional hot-mix asphalt mixtures, providing technical support for low-carbon road construction in Asia. Freeze–thaw cycles and salt solution concentration had markedly opposite effects on microcrack propagation and fatigue failure. Meanwhile, a high RAP content exacerbated initial microdamage, leading to unstable fatigue performance—this finding explains the core cause of discrepancies in existing research. A correlation between WMRAMO and WMRAM fatigue life, based on RAP content and loading strain, was established, enabling the prediction of WMRAM fatigue life through mortar-scale tests, offering a new method for material design in road engineering in cold regions of Asia. This research fills a gap in environmental synergy studies of WMRA technology under climatic conditions common in cold regions of Asia, providing a scientific basis for balancing infrastructure development and environmental protection.

Keywords
Warm-mix recycled asphalt mixture
Fatigue performance
Multi-scale analysis
Freeze–thaw cycles
Environmental synergies
Funding
This work was financially supported by a self-funded project of Inner Mongolia Power (Group) Co., Ltd, Inner Mongolia Power Research Institute (2024, Issue 114, 2024-ZC-2-08), and the Inner Mongolia Natural Science Foundation (2023LHMS05009).
Conflict of interest
Wang Yu is affiliated with Inner Mongolia Power (Group) Co., Ltd, which partly funded this study. The funder had no role in study design; data collection, analysis, or interpretation; manuscript preparation; or the decision to publish. The authors declare no other competing interests.
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Asian Journal of Water, Environment and Pollution, Electronic ISSN: 1875-8568 Print ISSN: 0972-9860, Published by AccScience Publishing