Use of Recycled Asphalt Pavement (RAP) in Airport Pavements

Abstract

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) currently does not allow use of recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) on Airport Improvement Program (AIP) funded airport runway and taxiway pavement projects, and is allowed for use only in pavement shoulders. FAA’s National Airport Pavement and Materials Research Center (NAPMRC) was established to evaluate performance of new and sustainable asphalt material technologies (such as WMA, RAP, etc.) under heavy aircraft loading at high pavement temperatures. As part of Test Cycle 2 (TC2), six test lanes were constructed – four outdoors and two indoors, each encompassing three different test sections. In two indoor lanes, RAP was added to the warm mix asphalt (WMA). Lane-1 is the control section with FAA standard P401 specification hot mix asphalt (HMA). Heavy weight deflectometer (HWD) tests were performed on the constructed test lanes to characterize the pavements. Extensive laboratory tests are planned on RAP/WMA and HMA (field cores and loose mixes). The test lanes will be subjected to accelerated pavement tests (APT) using custom designed airport heavy vehicle simulator (HVS-A) to study rutting performance (at high pavement temperatures) and fatigue behavior. This paper presents construction of test lanes, asphalt mix designs (with and without RAP), results from HWD tests on test lanes with RAP/WMA, and results from laboratory tests on pavement materials..