Sustainability in Pavement Materials and Design

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce a new Special Issue “Sustainability in Pavement Materials and Design”, of the journal Sustainability.

Transportation infrastructures are fundamental for global development, promoting socio-economic opportunities, and enabling economies to operate more competitively. In particular, pavement construction and maintenance activities have contributed significantly to the 34% of construction and demolition waste of the total generated worldwide. The world economy needs to grow and develop; however, the paradigm must change to a sustainable development based on a responsible consumption of natural resources and eco-efficient design of new products and solutions. The design of eco-efficient pavements considering the use of recycled products and/or bio-based solutions is a step forward in the direction of sustainable economies. This approach is aligned with the circular economy of materials, which considers preventing waste by extending the life cycles of materials without downgrading their functionality. The multi-recycling capacity of materials also plays an important role. The use of rejuvenators can contribute to recovering materials’ properties, adding value to the materials and contributing to solutions with similar or better performances. A life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is fundamental to validate the impacts of the new solutions.

This Special Issue focuses on eco-efficient pavement design and sustainable materials for paving solutions, aiming to reduce the use of natural resources and the amount of waste generated during construction and maintenance actions. It aims to cover eco-efficient design solutions that can ensure that sustainable development aligns with international goals, which is in line with the aim of the journal Sustainability.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include, but are not limited to the following:

• Bio-Green-Circular economy by creating value to the products using bio-based solutions or recycled materials.
• Eco-efficient pavement design considering the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources for the low-impact development of economies.
• Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) of solutions.
• Multi-recycling capacity of materials.
• The application of rejuvenators to recover materials’ properties and add value.
• Paving materials for bound and unbound layers.

Prof. Dr. Vítor Antunes
Dr. Ana Cristina Freire
Prof. Dr. José Neves
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.