ABSTRACT
Although sustainable infrastructure is indispensable, there is almost no reported research on an asphalt concrete (AC) and rubberized concrete (RC) composite pavement. Furthermore, each study incorporating rubber mostly deployed one or two supplementary materials. Therefore, the performance of sustainable AC/RC pavements with various supplementary materials including zeolite, slag, fly ash, and steel fiber was comprehensively investigated in this study. 126 cylinders (150×300 mm) and 84 beams (150×150×530 mm) under 4-point bending were tested. Based on the results, AC/RC pavement indicated much higher compressive strength, flexural strength, stiffness, and energy absorption capacity than AC one. Although 25% of coarse aggregate was replaced with rubber, when 30% of cement was replaced with zeolite, fly ash, and slag (each 10%) and steel fibers (1% of the beam volume) were added, 83.7% of the flexural strength of AC/plain concrete (PC) beams was retained. With 25% replacement of coarse aggregate by rubber and use of zeolite and slag (each 15%), 87.4% of the compressive strength of AC/PC was retained. 25% rubber and 30% slag were found to be the optimum design for AC/RC pavement. Moreover, results from the proposed equations for predicting flexural and compressive strengths were in good agreement with the test ones.
Acknowledgements
This study was financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan (project No.: MOST 108-2218-E-009-036). The support is highly appreciated. The authors are also grateful to Chien Chung Construction Co. for providing free bitumen.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).