Utilization of Waste Rubber Powder in Semi-Flexible Pavement

Abstract

The central concept of semi-flexible pavement (SFP) is to combine the best qualities of concrete and asphalt pavement by means of filling the voids of the large gap asphalt mixture (LGAM) with good fluidity grout. The major purpose of this study is to determine the feasibility of utilizing waste rubber powder in the grout so as to reduce the stiffness of the semi-flexible pavement. In this paper, seven kinds of grout were prepared by adding different volume dosage of the waste rubber powder and seven kinds of SFP were also prepared. By means of rutting, dynamic elastic modulus and low-temperature cracking performance tests, the performances of SFP were compared. The experimental results illustrated that the waste rubber powder was suitable to the semi-flexible pavement material. With the dosage of rubber powder increased, the anti-rutting, dynamic modulus of SFP decreased, but the low-temperature cracking of SFP was improved. Preferably, the volume dosage of the waste rubber powder should be not more than 20%.