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Asphalt pavements often experience damage from freeze–thaw cycles in seasonal frozen regions, and asphalt–aggregate adhesion is essential to asphalt mixtures' ability to withstand freeze–thaw damage. To quantitatively investigate the effect of asphalt–aggregate adhesion on mechanical performance of asphalt mixtures under freeze–thaw cycles, in this study, loose asphalt stones were prepared with coarse aggregates, and the quantitative boiling test was performed to evaluate the asphalt–aggregate adhesion property under freeze–thaw cycles at first; subsequently, the high-temperature creep and low-temperature splitting test were adopted with the stone matrix asphalt (SMA) to evaluate the mechanical performance under freeze–thaw cycles; finally, the gray relation analysis (GRA) method was used to analyze the relationship between the asphalt–aggregate adhesion property and mechanical performance. The results suggested that the asphalt–aggregate adhesion property decreased rapidly as the freeze–thaw cycle increased. The high-temperature viscous strain increased 346.13%, and the low-temperature strain energy decreased 14.34% after 21 freeze–thaw cycles. Through the GRA method, it was found that asphalt–aggregate adhesion properties with 4.75 and 9.5 mm sieve-size aggregates had a greater impact on the elastic and viscous properties of SMA, respectively. This study contributes to the design of SMA in seasonal frozen regions and provides a reference to study the damage mechanism of other types of asphalt mixtures in seasonal frozen regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]