A Study on Life Cycle Analysis of Bituminous and Cement Concrete Pavements with Recycled Materials in Circular Economy

Abstract

Abstract The pavement engineering community across the world is including the concept of a circular economy. Natural aggregate sources are depleting across the globe and there is a need to use recycled materials in pavement layers without discarding them as waste material. This research paper discusses the suitability of recycled asphalt pavement and recycled concrete aggregate for wearing course layers of bituminous concrete pavement and cement concrete pavement respectively. The suitability of above discussed recycled materials at different proportions is taken from the literature for both pavements. Moreover, a life cycle analysis is carried out regarding the carbon footprint estimation for both the pavements with recycled materials using cradle to grave approach for a typical design problem considered with suitable assumptions. The study emphasizes the benefits of using recycled materials in pavement construction and from the analysis, it is evident that the use of recycled materials with higher proportions in both pavements per kilometer construction showed lower carbon footprint estimation than the pavements built using natural aggregates.