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The Future of Road Pavement Materials: Towards the Improvement of Performances and Sustainability

A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Construction and Building Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2025 | Viewed by 3909

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Theoretical and Applied Sciences, Università degli Studi eCampus, 22060 Novedrate, Italy
Interests: hot and cold recycling; waste materials in bituminous mixtures; clear binders; linear viscoelasticity and damage modeling; orthotropic steel deck pavements
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, many innovative materials and techniques have been introduced in the field of road pavements, with the aim of improving performance and reducing the impact on the environment during construction and service life. Indeed, the severe degree of climate change that is occurring on our planet is pushing pavement engineers to find solutions not only to limit the exploitation of natural resources, the generation of wastes, and the emission of pollutants but also to extend the durability of pavements and delay the necessity of maintenance interventions.

This Special Issue aims to collect up-to-date and high-quality studies that deal with the characterization and application of the aforementioned solutions, with a particular focus on the following topics:

  • Advanced materials for increasing the performance and durability of asphalt binders and mixtures;
  • Recycling of marginal materials and by-products from industrial processes in asphalt pavements;
  • Bio-binders, bitumen extenders, and replacers;
  • Structure performance, design, modeling, and service life prediction;
  • Advanced trends in rehabilitation and preservation.

Reviews and original papers correlated to the above themes and also dealing generally with methodologies, case studies, simulations, and experimental testing are welcome.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Sustainability.

Dr. Edoardo Bocci
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • high-performing materials
  • innovative additives and bio-additives
  • re-use of marginal materials
  • recycling of reclaimed asphalt (cold, half-warm, warm, and hot techniques)
  • sustainable materials
  • environmental impact reduction
  • smart pavements
  • pavement asset management
  • life cycle assessment and cost analysis

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 4399 KiB  
Article
Performance of Crumb Rubber Tire-Modified Bitumen for Malaysian Climate Regions
by Ronald Blab, Juraidah Ahmad, Ekarizan Shaffie, Norbaya Sidek, Johannes Mirwald, Lukas Eberhardsteiner and Bernhard Hofko
Materials 2024, 17(23), 5800; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma17235800 - 26 Nov 2024
Viewed by 794
Abstract
Researchers are increasingly concerned about the vast amounts of waste rubber tires produced globally, which contribute significantly to environmental pollution. The potential of incorporating waste rubber tires to modify bitumen has garnered considerable interest. This study assesses pavement design temperatures according to SUPERPAVE [...] Read more.
Researchers are increasingly concerned about the vast amounts of waste rubber tires produced globally, which contribute significantly to environmental pollution. The potential of incorporating waste rubber tires to modify bitumen has garnered considerable interest. This study assesses pavement design temperatures according to SUPERPAVE standards for representative Malaysian regions. The assessment is based on hourly air temperature data and simulates temperature diffusion in typical Malaysian road pavements using the finite difference method (FDM). Tests on neat bitumen (PEN 60/70) and crumb rubber-modified bitumen (CR-TMB) samples evaluated their physical and rheological properties across various temperatures and aging stages. These tests were conducted using the dynamic shear rheometer, rotational viscometer, and bending beam rheometer. The attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) analysis provided insights into the aging processes of both PEN 60/70 and CR-TMB. The findings indicate that adding 15% crumb rubber to produce CR-TMB enhances the physical and rheological properties of bitumen. Additionally, this modification significantly improves aging behavior, highlighting its potential for more resilient and sustainable road construction materials. Therefore, the use of crumb rubber in road construction should be considered to improve pavement durability and strength. Furthermore, utilizing crumb rubber as an alternative material can reduce costs by recycling waste materials. Full article
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19 pages, 12676 KiB  
Article
Influence of Bio-Additives on Recycled Asphalt Pavements
by Giuseppe D’Addio, Cristina Oreto, Nunzio Viscione and Rosa Veropalumbo
Materials 2024, 17(14), 3526; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma17143526 - 16 Jul 2024
Viewed by 852
Abstract
The construction and maintenance of asphalt pavements is a resource-consuming sector, where the continuous rehabilitation of the superficial layers demands large volumes of non-renewable resources. The present work focuses on the design and characterization of asphalt mixtures for the binder layer of an [...] Read more.
The construction and maintenance of asphalt pavements is a resource-consuming sector, where the continuous rehabilitation of the superficial layers demands large volumes of non-renewable resources. The present work focuses on the design and characterization of asphalt mixtures for the binder layer of an asphalt pavement containing 50% reclaimed asphalt (RAP), in which seven different bio-based additives, identified as R1A, R1C, R2A, R2B, R2C, R3A, and R3B, were added to improve the workability, strength, and stiffness properties. The experimental program envisioned the hot mixing of aggregates and RAP with either a 50/70 or a 70/100 bitumen and, in turn, each of the seven bio-additives. The asphalt mixtures underwent the characterization of their densification properties; air voids; indirect tensile strength (ITS); indirect tensile stiffness modulus at 10, 20, 40, and 60 °C; and rutting resistance at 60 °C. The results highlighted that the performance in terms of workability and ITS of the resulting mixtures depends on the type of bio-additive and largely on the fresh bitumen type, while the stiffness at high temperature is not significantly affected by the presence of the bio-additives. Full article
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