Empirical relationships between compressive and flexural strength of concrete containing recycled asphalt material for pavement applications using different specimen configurations

Abstract

The flexural strength of pavement concrete is generally deduced by testing beams or by applying empirical equations. In this investigation, concrete mixtures were manufactured, incorporating 0, 20, 50 and 100% Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP), by weight, as a replacement for natural aggregates. The compressive strength was measured using cubic specimens and the flexural strength was measured for three types of specimens; beam, semicircular (SCB) and modified beam. This study proposes logarithmic and power equations that allow the estimation of the flexural strength of a concrete mix that incorporates RAP as a function of its compressive strength. Linear or power models are proposed to predict beam flexural strength from SCB specimens and a logarithmic model for modified beam specimens. Statistical analyses show that the proposed prediction models can be considered sufficiently accurate and their use is justified.