Author(s): Vieira, Carina ; Correia, Eugénia ; Domingues, Daniela ; Rato, Maria João ; Caetano, Fernanda ; Borges Miranda, Henrique ; Carvalho, Manuela
Date: 2024
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.21/17307
Origin: Repositório Científico do Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa
Subject(s): Road pavements; Circular economy; Resilient infrastructure
Nowadays, there are increasingly efforts to introduce an economy based on circularity principles, but there is still a gap between the intentions and the actual measures to achieve it. In Portugal, reclaimed asphalt is generally used as granular material for unbound road layers or reused mainly as asphalt mix in the municipal road network, instead of reusing this premium material in new asphalt mixes for medium/heavy traffic, mainly due to the lack of knowledge on how to use these materials without compromising the performance or durability of the pavement. The purpose of this study is therefore to evaluate the technological suitability of using two different rejuvenator additives (rejuvenator solid additive and terminal blend bitumen with rejuvenating additive) for use with highly aged reclaimed asphalt (RA) in the production of new asphalt mixtures for motorway surface courses. To achieve this objective, three gap graded asphalt mixtures (one of reference) for surface course were produced with 20% highly aged reclaimed asphalt milled from Brisa's motorway network. The results show that asphalt mixtures with reclaimed asphalt had better performance (water sensitivity, resistance to permanent deformation) and similar surface properties compared to reference asphalt mixture (without RA), regardless of the rejuvenator additive used. Further studies will consider pavement monitoring the asphalt mixtures studied as well as mixtures with other rejuvenator additives in order to expand the possibilities of using reclaimed asphalt in Portugal.
