A hybrid strategy in selecting diverse combinations of innovative sustainable materials for asphalt pavements

This project integrates recent innovations of recycled materials used in designing and building sustainable pavements. An increasing environmental awareness and the demand for improving economic and construction efficiencies, through measures such as construction warrantees and goals to reduce air pollution under the Kyoto Protocol, have increased the efforts to implement sustainable materials in roadways. The objective of this research is to develop a systematic approach toward selecting optimum combinations of sustainable materials for the construction of asphalt pavements. The selected materials, warm mix asphalt (WMA), recycled asphalt shingles (RAS), and reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) were incorporated in this study. The results of this research are intended to serve as guidelines in the selection of the mixed sustainable materials for asphalt pavements. The approach developed from this project draws upon previous research efforts integrating graphical modeling with optimizing the amount of sustainable materials based on the performance. With regard to moisture susceptibility and rutting potential test results, as well as the MIM analysis based on a 95% confidence interval, the rutting performance and moisture susceptibility of asphalt mixtures are not significantly different regardless of the percentages of RAS, RAP, or WMA. The optimum mixture choices could be made by the plant emission rankings with consideration of the optimal WMA types, percentages of RAS/RAP, and WMA production temperatures. The WMA mixtures prepared with 75% RAP and Advera® WMA have produced the lowest CO2 emissions among the investigated mixture types.