The evolution of the mechanical behaviour of cold recycled mixtures stabilised with cement and bitumen: field and laboratory study

Abstract

Road construction and maintenance involve huge amounts of materials that can include wastes from the demolition of old asphalt pavements. Recycling allows environmental and economic benefits to be achieved, by reducing the consumption of natural resources. These advantages are maximised with cold-recycling, in particular when full depth reclamation (FDR) is adopted as road rehabilitation technique. The aim of this research was to compare different FDR techniques, which produce cement-treated material and cement–bitumen treated material (CBTM) combining the use of cement and bitumen emulsion or foamed bitumen. The FDR was applied in a trial section built along an in-service highway and monitored with annual falling weight deflectometer (FWD) surveys in order to evaluate the performance evolution. Results highlighted that, because of the effect of temperature, the FWD deflections were not suitable to accurately evaluate the evolution of the mechanical behaviour of the cold recycled mixture (CRM) layers. However, the temperature-corrected FWD moduli allowed to conclude that the performance of the CRM layers was similar.