Characterization of a Warm Mix Asphalt Containing Reclaimed Asphalt Pavements

Warm mix asphalt (WMA) technology presents a wide potential to be successfully used in road works construction projects. Although its most salient advantage is to be environmental friendly, it has technical and economic assets. Another widely mentioned advantage of WMA technology is the opportunity to be used in the production of recycled mixtures (recycled or reclaimed asphalt pavement, RAP). This paper describes a laboratory effort that studied WMA mixtures with 20%-50% RAP contents using Marshall, resilient modulus, tensile strength ratio (TSR) and rutting tests. WMA and RAP samples were mixed using a chemical product which foamed asphalt. The chemical product was added to the asphalt binder AC 60-70 (PG 58-22) during the mixing process of the WMA-RAP. Using the additive, the mixing temperature of RAP mixtures can decrease 30°C, reaching similar volumetric composition with respect to traditional hot mix asphalt (HMA). WMA-RAP mixtures developed greater resistance to moisture damage as well as resistance to high temperature of service under monotonic and repeated loading in comparison with HMA control mixture.