EVALUATION OF COLD RECYCLED ASPHALT MIXTURES MODIFIED WITH CONVENTIONAL AND POLYMER MODIFIED EMULSION
Open Access
- Author:
- Chen, Xuan
- Graduate Program:
- Civil Engineering
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- March 30, 2015
- Committee Members:
- Mansour Solaimanian, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Shelley Marie Stoffels, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor - Keywords:
- Cold Recycling
Recycled Asphalt Pavement
Asphalt Emulsion
Mixture Design
Polymer Modified Asphalt Mixture. - Abstract:
- Cold recycling (CR) is a partial recycling process through which a portion of the existing recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) material is rejuvenated and placed back on the road as a new base course without introducing heat during the recycling process. Although CR technology is not a new concept, it has not been understood as well as Hot Mixture Asphalt (HMA) and Warm Mixture Asphalt (WMA). Currently, a nationwide standard for CR mixture design does not exist. Furthermore, sufficient data is not available to indicate if there is a difference between the performance of cold mixtures stabilized with conventional emulsions versus those stabilized with polymer modified emulsions. In this thesis, the performance of lab produced CR specimens with conventional asphalt emulsion and polymer modified asphalt emulsion is investigated through conducting a series of tests. CR specimens were prepared in precise procedures to ensure reliable and consistent specimen production for testing. Through basic volumetric measurements and performance related tests including strength, durability, moisture damage resistance, and rutting resistance, a general CR mixture design procedure was established. Statistical analysis was conducted to determine the difference between performance of CR mixtures modified with conventional and polymer modified emulsion. Although no significant difference in performance was observed for most of the performance measures, polymer modified emulsion was shown to improve the rutting resistance of CR mixtures compared with conventional emulsion.