Abstract
The Cement Grouted Bituminous Mix (CGBM) is an innovative material that could be used to build airport pavements subjected to heavy concentrated loads or fuel and solvent leaks. CGBM is composed of a porous asphalt clogged with an expansive cement mixture, which fills the asphalt voids. This paper focuses on two airport pavements (i.e., a taxiway and a helipad one) to be paved in an Italian airport. For each surface, the construction and maintenance costs of a CGBM pavement and a traditional flexible pavement have been compared. The pavements should bear different traffic loads, while the weather, subgrade, and materials are the same: the fatigue and rutting verification gives structures whose cost analysis leads to different results. The CGBM solution for the taxiway has a cost comparable to that of the equivalent traditional flexible pavement (i.e., 73.87 €/m2 vs. 73.20 €/m2 during the service life). On the other hand, the overall discounted cost of the helipad surface paved with CGBM is higher than that obtained for the traditional pavement (i.e., 82.4 €/m2 vs. 67.5 €/m2). Therefore, the study demonstrates that the economic opportunity of CGBM solutions strongly depends on traffic loads.
Highlights
Cement Grouted Bituminous Mix (CGBM) consists of an open grade asphalt clogged with expansive cement mortar that clogs the voids of the asphalt
In the last decades this solution has been used in port and airport areas subject to heavy loads or where fuel and solvent leaks can occur: port storage areas, parking lots for heavy loads, airport taxiways and apron, and helipads
This paper deals with two CGBM pavements designed to pave a taxiway and a helipad in an Italian airport
Summary
In both areas to be paved, the subgrade loading capacity is good Where Nc is the number of repetitions that causes the fatigue rupture, ε is the maximum horizontal deformation at the bottom of the asphalt layers, E* is the asphalt elastic modulus, Ns is the number of repetitions that causes permanent plastic deformations of the granular layers and the subgrade, εc is the vertical deformation at the bottom of the unbound layers or the subbase layer, and f 1 , f 2 , f 3 , f 4 , f 5 are experimental coefficients (Table 7) provided by the Shell and Asphalt Institute [28] Both verifications have been carried out according to the Miner’s law (Equation (3) [29]): n. For each pavement the discounted costs refer to the overall costs at the construction year obtained deducting the costs during the service life for interest determined by the time and by risk [31]
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have