Research on Rheological Properties of High-Percentage Artificial RAP Binder with WMA Additives

Abstract

With the development of pavement recycling technology, the requirement of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) is substantially increasing. Warm-mix recycled asphalt (WMRA) technology has made great progress, which can effectively decrease the working temperature and improve the RAP content. In this study, the rheological properties of recycled binders with incorporation of high-percentage artificial RAP binder (30–70%) were evaluated using two types of warm-mix asphalt (WMA) additives, i.e., polyethylene wax R and surfactant M. The dynamic shear rheometer (DSR) and beam bending rheometer (BBR) tests were conducted on the recycled binders. The results showed that the temperature and frequency played an important role in determining the complex shear modulus of the high-percentage WMRA binders. The dependency of phase angle on frequency increased after the long-term aging. The WMA additive R had a relatively huge impact on the rheological properties of asphalt, which mainly occurred before the PAV aging of recycled asphalt binder; the WMA additive M had no significant impact on the rheological properties of recycled asphalt binder. The WMA additive R enhanced the low-temperature rheology of recycled asphalt binder, while the WMA additive M enhanced the high-temperature rheology of recycled asphalt binder. Both of these types of WMA additives improved the antifatigue performance of recycled asphalt binder. The increased content of RAP binder improved the high-temperature performance and reduced the low-temperature performance of the recycled asphalt binder. However, it had no obvious impact on the fatigue performance. In addition, there was a good linear relation between the RAP binder content and the two indexes of the multiple stress creep recovery (MSCR) test.