Effects on Availability of Road Network (EARN)

There is a need for engineers, particular the client's engineers, to understand the full implications of using reclaimed and secondary materials. Whilst efforts to make highway construction more sustainable are laudable, they must be effective over the longer-term and not be just reduced cost and/or environmental impact on the construction phase alone. If the use of such components in the mixtures does affect the serviceability or durability of the mixture, then any savings may be transitory.

The project will build upon existing knowledge, supplemented by limited site and laboratory studies, to develop a specific model to look at this issue and to provide indicatory values for use in the model. The existing knowledge will be extended with an extensive literature search on the times for construction and the relevant effects that determine the service lifetime of the different pavement layers. The site trials will look at mixtures with and without reclaimed asphalt, but will have to assess their durability from early-life properties. The laboratory trials will concentrate on combined effect of ageing and moisture damage on the performance of selected asphalt mixtures containing different proportions of reclaimed asphalt. All three strands will be fed into life-cycle analysis models to customise them for the effect of using alternative component materials on the availability of the network and their overall financial and environmental cost.

Partners:

TRL Limited, UK (Co-ordinator) TRL Cliff Nicholls cnicholls@trl.co.uk
University of Kassel, Germany UoK Konrad Mollenhauer k.mollenhauer@uni-kassel.de
University College Dublin, Ireland UCD Amanda Gibney amanda.gibney@ucd.ie
Technische Universiteit Delft, Netherlands TUD Katerina Varveri a.varveri@tudelft.nl
Lagan Asphalt, Ireland Lagan Sean Cassidy scassidy@lagandublin.com
Shell Bitumen, UK / Germany Shell Richard Taylor richard.taylor@shell.com

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