Asphalt binder has long been widely applied in pavement engineering due to its great viscoelastic properties [
1,
2]. However, with the rapid development of society and the economy, conventionally modified asphalt binders with polymeric modifiers suffer more serious sever environment of increasing traffic volume and vehicle loads. These polymeric modifiers inevitably degrade after being exposed to oxygen, high temperature, and ultraviolet light for a long time, which makes them lack the durability necessary to meet the requirements of current pavement engineering [
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9]. Therefore, it is necessary to explore better modifiers to solve the inherent structural defects of polymeric modifiers.
Epoxy-modified asphalt binder is a thermosetting pavement material currently used primarily in bridge deck pavement due to its excellent resistance to rutting, deformation, and fatigue [
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15]. In 1967, the Adhesive Engineering Company in USA was proactively authorized by Shell Oil to use thermosetting epoxy-modified asphalt binder for the first time in the U.S. for the San Mateo–Hayward Bridge steel bridge deck paving [
10]. In 2001, academician Wei Huang et al. used epoxy-modified asphalt binder as a binder to prepare asphalt mixtures, which were successfully used in the deck-paving project of the Nanjing Yangtze River Second Bridge [
16]. Since then, thermosetting epoxy-modified asphalt binder has been widely used as a paving material for steel box girder bridges worldwide, achieving better paving results [
17,
18,
19]. Depending on the advantages of thermosetting epoxy-modified asphalt binder, a considerable amount of research work has been carried out on mixture performances in the laboratory to determine its potential engineering applications [
20,
21,
22,
23,
24,
25,
26]. Qing Lu et al. [
20] developed a bio-based epoxy asphalt binder (BEAB) and found that the formulated BEAB can improve the raveling resistance and stability of porous asphalt mixture without reducing its permeability. Panos Apostolidis et al. [
21] investigated the effects of filler type on the durability of epoxy-modified asphalt mixture and found that proportional increase of epoxy in the asphalt mixture led to substantially improved mechanical properties (i.e., strength and toughness). The strength and toughness of mixes containing only EA were higher than all the others, while pure limestone mixes were stronger and tougher than those with hydrated lime. Shuang Shi et al. [
25] proposed a new strategy of collaborative toughening to overcome the hot-mix epoxy resin commonly used in the market, which has insufficient toughness, resulting in cracking of steel bridge deck pavement. The results showed that the epoxy asphalt with 15 wt% of toughen agent can decrease the activation energy of epoxy resin from 48.6 KJ/mol to 42.4 KJ/mol. Additionally, the toughening agent can reduce the viscosity and glass transition temperature of epoxy asphalt. Ali Jamshidi et al. [
26] comprehensively compared the high-temperature rutting resistance, low temperature cracking resistance and water resistance of traditional SBS-modified asphalt mixtures and different types of thermosetting epoxy-modified asphalt mixtures. The study showed that thermosetting epoxy-modified asphalt binder has excellent road performance and is an ideal material for road paving. In addition, according to previous research, despite the higher cost of epoxy-modified asphalt binder, its paving cost is usually about four times lower than that of conventional polymer-modified asphalt binder from a full life-cycle perspective because epoxy-modified asphalt binder has better fatigue resistance than conventional polymer-modified asphalt binder (such as SBS-modified asphalt binder), which will greatly reduce the repair and maintenance cost in the long-term service period [
10,
11,
27]. Although epoxy-modified asphalt binder is very promising in applications in road pavement, the limited reserve time and long curing period of the main epoxy-modified asphalt binder products can be a challenge in road paving and maintenance. Due to different curing agents, cured epoxy-modified asphalt binder’s curing mechanism and curing law are not the same, so epoxy-modified asphalt binder has a different reserve time and maintenance period. Yong Yan et al. [
28] studied the reserve time and maintenance time of epoxy-modified asphalt binder cured by anhydride curing agent at different temperatures, and the results showed that its rotational viscosity is still less than 2 Pa·s after 120 min, which meets the requirements of the reserve time of pavement paving, but the stability of the mixture to reach 40 kN needs more than 30 d. Guoping Feng et al. [
29] prepared new amine curing agent, which was stabilized to 77 kN at 60 °C for 4 d of the maintenance, but the reserve time reached 3 Pa·s after only 28 min at a preparation temperature of 140 °C. The long maintenance period of epoxy-modified asphalt binder may affect the progress of the project and make it impossible to open traffic quickly, and the short reserve time limits the spreading of epoxy-modified asphalt binder in road paving as well.
Therefore, in this work, a home-made modified amine was used as a curing agent to develop a road-oriented epoxy-modified asphalt binder with great mechanical properties, short maintenance period, and suitable reserve time. The effect of preparation temperature on the reserve time of epoxy-modified asphalt binder was investigated to determine the optimum preparation temperature. The pavement performance of epoxy-modified asphalt binder and its mixture were comprehensively evaluated and analyzed based on ensuring the reserve time of epoxy-modified asphalt binder. By achieving these objectives, this study provides valuable insights to improve the understanding of epoxy-modified asphalt binder materials and their potential applications in sustainable infrastructure practices.