## 1 Introduction  
For the past years, the natural environment has experienced a severe deterioration worldwide, with frequent occurrence of extreme weather events, including snow appearance in unusual seasons and locations. Consequently, ice formed by melted and refrozen snow on roads deteriorates their skid resistance, i.e., the force developed when a tire that is prevented from rotating slides along the pavement surface, which makes the motion of vehicles very unsteady, especially during braking or maneuvering [1]. Given this, anti-icing asphalt mixtures have been applied in Switzerland, Austria, the United States, and some other countries for the construction of snow- and ice-melting roads, which are also referred to as self-ice-melting pavements [2; 3; 4; 5; 6]. The engineering experience in the United States, Japan, Germany, and some other countries has shown that the traffic accident rate related to pavement icing or snowing in winter can be reduced by 91.4% in the case of pavement mixing with the proposed anti-icing filler [7; 8]. Thus, snow- and ice-induced traffic congestion can be effectively alleviated to ensure a safer and smoother ride of vehicles. According to the \"Evaluation Test Method Manual\" sponsored by the US Strategic Highway Research Program, three methods were introduced for testing the deicing performance--ice melting test, ice penetration test and ice undercutting test [9; 10; 11]--and these tests have already been improved by some researchers [12; 13; 14]. Although the shear, disbandment, and scraping tests have been developed, and these tests have shown a realistic representation of field parameters, their results are not yet standardized [15; 16; 17; 18]. Many researchers evaluate the ice-breaking effect of the self-ice-melting pavements by measuring the numerical value of swing, also referred to as British Pendulum Number (BPN), which is widely used for skid resistance assessment [5; 19]. When exploring the salt dissolving-out progression in the anti-icing asphalt mixtures, the conductivity test is applied [20]. Japanese scholars developed an experimental vehicle with built-in drums, which can be used to evaluate the effect of tires with different textures and anti-freezing agent on snow- and ice-frozen roads [21]. The Pavement Research Center of Chang'an University, Xi'an, China, has developed a pavement ice-melting simulation tester, which can simulate the ice-melting performance of the snow-melting pavement [22]. Scholars from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, developed an adhesion force measurement system, which allows measuring the adhesion between ice and asphalt pavement [23]. In general, some ice-melting tests fail to separate the entire melted portion from the remaining ice. In the studies of salt dissolution, certain problems with the variation range identification arose when the salt dissolving-out amount reached a certain high value. Some experimental tools being applicable only to particular areas, the respective results are reduced to indirect qualitative evaluation of the snow-melting ability. There are scarce data on the climatic zones of anti-icing asphalt mixture application. The respective evaluation techniques either involve the direct observation methods to evaluate the ice-breaking effect or evaluate the melting of self-ice-melting pavements visually and indirectly. The modified ice penetration test, which is used for measuring deicer performance based on the penetration capacity as a function of time, fails to measure the theoretical or extended time of ice penetration capability [24]. Furthermore, the modified ice undercutting test measures the deicer performance based on the undercut area but fails to measure the ice undercutting capability for the theoretical or extended time instants [25]. Given the above, the developed experimental instruments should be able to separate the melted portion from remaining snow and determine the melting quality more accurately, evaluating the relationship between melting quality and time.