Construction and Building Materials 147 (2017) 58–65

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Construction and Building Materials

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat

Laboratory performance analysis of high percentage artificial RAP binder

with WMA additives
Weiying Wang a, Jingyun Chen a,⇑, Yiren Sun a, Bin Xu b, Jian Li a, Jiayin Liu a
a
Dalian University of Technology, No. 2 Linggong Road, Ganjingzi District, Dalian 116024, PR China
b
Research Institute of Highway Ministry of Transport, No. 8 Xitucheng Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100088, PR China

h i g h l i g h t s

 Performance tests were conducted using high percentages of artificial RAP binder and two WMA additives.
 The relationship between RAP contents and performance test results was analyzed.
 The artificial RAP content had little effect on the BBR test results.
 Both artificial RAP content and WMA additive type affected the performance of recycled binders.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Warm mix asphalt (WMA) technology particularly involving high percentage of reclaimed asphalt pave-
Received 6 December 2016 ment (RAP) has become more commonly used due to its promising advantages in environment, energy
Received in revised form 31 March 2017 cost and workability. This paper focuses on the laboratory performance investigation of recycled binders
Accepted 15 April 2017
containing high percentage artificial RAP binder (up to 70%) with incorporation of two types of WMA
Available online 25 April 2017
additives, i.e., polyethylene wax (R) and surfactant (M). The artificial RAP binder was obtained through
rolling thin film oven (RTFO) and pressure aging vessel (PAV) aging to ensure its pure source and known
Keywords:
properties. The rotational viscometer (RV), dynamic shear rheometer (DSR) and beam bending rheometer
High percentage artificial RAP binder
WMA additives
(BBR) tests were carried out on the recycled binders. The results indicated that when the percentage of
Rotational viscometer (RV) the artificial RAP binder was up to 70%, the performance still satisfied the requirements of the
Dynamic shear rheometer (DSR) Superpave binder specifications. In addition, both the artificial RAP binder content and the type of
Beam bending rheometer (BBR) WMA additives played an important role in determining the performance of recycled binders with
WMA additives. Typically, the WMA additive R and artificial RAP binder could offset the disadvantages
of each other in rutting and fatigue resistance respectively. Moreover, most of the test results exhibited
obvious linear or exponential trends with the artificial RAP binder content. However, the increase of the
artificial RAP binder content had little influence on the BBR test data.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Over the years, the utilization of reclaimed asphalt pavement
(RAP) has been widely promoted due to its environmental and eco-
nomic benefits, as the construction of new roads has gradually sat-
isfied the constant growth in traffic volume. Various recycling
technologies for asphalt pavement, such as hot recycling in asphalt
plant, hot in-place recycling and cold in-place recycling, have been
developed and proved to possess their own advantages and charac-
teristics [1–5]. National cooperative highway research program
(NCHRP) Reports 452 and D9-12 provided a reference guide for
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: dlut_chenjy@163.com (J. Chen).
the mix design and tests with incorporation of RAP materials into
SuperpaveTM mixtures [6,7]. In addition, the recycled asphalt mix-
tures containing a certain percentage of RAP have been found to
exhibit pavement performance similar to the virgin asphalt mix-
tures and better rutting resistance [8].
In the past decades, the percentage of RAP used in the recycled
mixtures was generally lower than 25%. With the development of
recycling technologies, the requirement of utilizing higher percent-
age of RAP is rising. NCHRP Report 9-46 suggested increasing the
RAP content in the recycled asphalt mixtures [9]. Nevertheless,
previous studies have indicated that the RAP content had a
significant influence on recycled asphalt pavement [10,11]. An
increment of RAP content would lead to a series of problems, such
as poorer low-temperature cracking resistance, poorer fatigue

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2017.04.142
0950-0618/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 W. Wang et al. / Construction and Building Materials 147 (2017) 58–65 59

resistance, partial blending, secondary aging due to high construc- has its own characteristics, the artificial RAP binder has the advan-
tion temperature, etc. Therefore, there still remains a big challenge tage of its pure source and known properties [10,22]. Thus, the arti-
in maintaining a high-quality well-performing pavement infras- ficial RAP binder was chosen rather than the RAP binder extracted
tructure with high percentage of RAP. With respect to the problems from milled materials in this paper.
mentioned above, many research studies have been conducted.
Shirodkar et al. [12,13] studied the degree of partial blending of 2. Objectives and scope
RAP binder for high RAP hot mix asphalt and developed a blending
chart for different degrees of blending to investigate the impacts of The objective of this paper is to evaluate the laboratory perfor-
partial blending on the critical grade of blended binder. Besides, mance of recycled asphalt binders containing high percentage of
the use of rejuvenator is a promising option for rejuvenating RAP artificial RAP binder (30–70%) with incorporation of two types of
binders and increasing RAP contents to above 50% without sacri- WMA additives. Two primary tasks are: (1) to analyze the
ficing the pavement service quality [14–16]. combined effect of artificial RAP binder and WMA additives on
These research efforts have improved the possibility of utilizing the performance of the blends at high, intermediate and low tem-
high RAP mixture and offered valuable references in the design and peratures, and (2) to quantify the relationship of artificial RAP bin-
construction of recycled asphalt pavement with high RAP contents. der content and the performance of RAP-WMA binder. A series of
However, the secondary aging of RAP in hot recycling process can- laboratory tests were conducted including rotational viscometer
not be ignored due to the high mixing and compaction tempera- (RV) tests, dynamic shear rheometer (DSR) tests and beam bending
ture. In addition, the use of high temperature during the rheometer (BBR) tests.
pavement construction would cause negative environmental
effects and energy cost. Hence, the warm mix asphalt (WMA) tech-
3. Laboratory and experiments
nology has been introduced into the construction of recycled
asphalt pavement.
3.1. Materials
It is well known that the WMA techniques are capable of lower-
ing the mixing and compaction temperatures [17]. During the
The virgin asphalt PG 58-22 commonly used in north area of
combined use of WMA techniques and RAP materials, multiple
China was selected for this research. The properties of virgin and
benefits were found and discussed, including reduction in green-
artificial RAP binders are shown in Table 1. It should be noted that
house gas emissions and energy cost, reducing the aging of the vir-
the G⁄sin (d) (2825 kPa) was obtained when the RAP binder was
gin asphalt and secondary aging of RAP, better workability, etc.,
subjected to further RTFO and PAV aging.
compared to the conventional recycled hot mix asphalt.
In this study, the recycled binders without WMA additives as
In recent years, research studies about high percentage of RAP
control binders were obtained by blending the virgin asphalt with
utilizing a variety of WMA additives and facilities have been
various percentages (30–70%, 10% increments) of artificial RAP
increasingly conducted. Guo et al. [1] performed a series of labora-
binder.
tory performance tests using Evotherm-DAT and S-I WMA addi-
Two types of WMA additives denoted as R and M were
tives containing 0% and 40% RAP. Mallick et al. [18] employed
employed to investigate the effect on the recycled binders. WMA
the Sasobit H8 as WMA additive, successfully recycling HMA with
additive R was a kind of white powder which is a polyethylene
75% RAP at lower temperature. Xiao et al. [8,19] restored 20–50%
wax and M was deep brown sticky liquid surfactant, which were
RAP with WMA technology to explore the rheological properties
recommended by suppliers to be added into the recycled binders
of recycled binders and the volumetric characteristics of Superpave
at a rate of 3% and 0.5% by total weight of asphalt binders, respec-
mix design, respectively. The results satisfied the requirement of
tively. Meanwhile the binders containing artificial RAP binder were
specifications. Carrion et al. [20] used international blend design
named RAP-R and RAP-M according to the WMA additive used.
methodologies to study binder blend design for hot and warm
Then all the recycled binders with and without WMA additives
asphalt mixture with high RAP content wearing courses and the
were subjected to the aging procedures of RTFO and PAV according
results of laboratory design showed that using up to 90% RAP con-
to the AASHTO T240 and R28 for the following performance tests
tent was a feasible option. Xiang et al. [21] exhibited the similar
[23,24].
moisture susceptibility as HMA utilizing the foam WMA containing
high percentages of RAP.
3.2. Performance tests
High RAP usage with WMA technology is becoming more and
more common. Nevertheless, data is still scarce and lacks conclu-
Viscosity tests were performed at 4 temperatures (115, 135, 155
sive findings. It is essential to conduct more systematic and com-
and 175 °C) in accordance with AASHTO T316 using the Brookfield
prehensive studies. This paper aims to explore the laboratory
rotational viscometer [25]. The viscosity is considered to be an
performance of recycled asphalt binders incorporating high per-
important factor to represent workability of asphalt coating the
centage (up to 70%) of RAP binder with two types of WMA addi-
aggregate and related to the mixing and compaction temperatures
tives. The RAP binder was artificially obtained through RTFO and
of asphalt mixtures [26].
PAV aging. Given that the percentage of RAP used was highly
The DSR tests were applied to characterize the performance of
dependent on the properties of the initial RAP binder, considera-
permanent deformation resistance and fatigue resistance at high
tions about its sources have to be taken into account [20]. Since
and intermediate temperatures according to AASHTO T315 [27].
the sources of RAP milled from pavement are complex and each
The rutting factor (G⁄/sin d) was used to assess the permanent

Table 1
Properties of virgin and RAP binders.

Binder type Unaged RTFO PAV

* *
Penetration Softening Viscosity G /sin d G /sin d G*sin d Stiffness m-value
(25 °C) (0.1 mm) point (°C) (135 °C) Pa.s (58 °C) (kPa) (58 °C) (kPa) (25 °C) (kPa) (12 °C) (MPa) (12 °C)
PG 58–22 84 45.97 0.253 1.872 3.498 1996 202 0.368
RAP binder 37 54.10 0.514 8.966 – 2825 – –
60 W. Wang et al. / Construction and Building Materials 147 (2017) 58–65

deformation of unaged recycled binders and short-term aged bin-
ders, which should be higher than 1.0 kPa and 2.2 kPa, respectively.
Furthermore, the failure temperature was analyzed as an indicator
for evaluation of the high temperature performance more directly
[19]. Then the fatigue resistance was assessed at intermediate tem-
perature by the fatigue factor (G⁄sin d) which should be lower than
5000 kPa for long-term aged binders.
The BBR tests were conducted to evaluate the property of low
temperature cracking resistance of the recycled binders with and
without WMA additives. The tests were conducted at 4 tempera-
tures (6, 12, 15 and 18 °C) in accordance with AASHTO
T313 considering the performance grade of virgin asphalt and the
shortage in the low temperature cracking property with the incor-
poration of artificial RAP binder [28]. The Superpave asphalt binder
specification provides a maximum value of 300 MPa for creep stiff-
ness and a minimum m-value of 0.300. The lower resistance to
cracking is generally considered to be a disadvantage of recycled
asphalt mixtures, especially for those containing both the WMA
additives and high percentage of RAP binder [29].
A flow chart of the experimental design used in this study is
shown in Fig. 1.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Viscosity analysis
The viscosity results of the recycled binders with and without
WMA additives are shown in Fig. 2. As expected, at any given test
temperature higher artificial RAP binder content resulted in higher
viscosity, regardless of WMA additives, since the aged asphalt is
more viscous than the virgin asphalt through the oxidation phe-
nomena [10].

Fig. 1. Flow chart of the experimental.

 W. Wang et al. / Construction and Building Materials 147 (2017) 58–65 61

1.80

1.60

1.40

1.20

Viscosity (Pa.s)
1.00

0.80

0.60

0.40

0.20

0.00
30 40 50 60 70 80
RAP content (%)

Fig. 2. Viscosity of recycled binders for different artificial RAP content.

Table 2
Linear equations between viscosity and artificial RAP binder contents.

Temp. Control RAP-M RAP-R

Equations R2 Equations R2 Equations R2
115 °C y = 0.0128x + 0.7044 0.93 y = 0.0113x + 0.7574 0.98 y = 0.0053x + 0.6113 0.95
135 °C y = 0.0027x + 0.2306 0.98 y = 0.0023x + 0.2453 0.97 y = 0.0013x + 0.1956 0.93
155 °C y = 0.0012x + 0.1176 0.97 y = 0.0009x + 0.1338 0.99 y = 0.0007x + 0.0987 0.98
175 °C y = 0.0004x + 0.0636 0.96 y = 0.0003x + 0.0666 0.99 y = 0.0002x + 0.0529 0.93

With respect to the effect of WMA additives on the recycled
binders, Fig. 2 displays the lower viscosity of the RAP-R binder,
while there is no noticeable difference of the viscosity of the
RAP-M binder and control binder. It means that the incorporation
of WMA additive R lowered mixing and compaction temperature
and the RAP-R binder had better workability with aggregates than
the control binder. However, it should not be concluded that the
WMA additive M had no warm mixing effect considering its own
material properties as a kind of surfactant, although the viscosity
of the RAP-M binder is not reduced.
In addition, as shown in Fig. 2, the viscosity increases linearly
with the amount of artificial RAP binder. Thus linear regression
equations including coefficients of determinations (R2) obtained
from the relationship of viscosity and artificial RAP binder contents
for each temperature to describe the increasing trends of viscosity
are presented in Table 2. It can be observed that the coefficients of
determinations (R2) are all greater than 0.9 and for each recycled
binder, when the temperature is higher, the increasing rate of vis-
cosity is lower. Additionally, as the temperature continues rising to
reach a working one, the contribution of the artificial RAP binder
contents or the WMA additives to the viscosity is almost negligible.
To analyze the reducing trends of viscosity, Fig. 3 exhibits the
relationship between slopes of the regression equations above
and test temperatures. Meanwhile, the exponential equations
whose coefficients of determinations (R2) are equal or greater than
manent deformation at high pavement temperature [30]. The fail-
ure temperatures of RAP binders with and without WMA additives
at various aging states are displayed in Fig. 4. Obviously, the higher
RAP content causes the higher failure temperature and the RAP-R
binder has the lowest failure temperature. Thus, the incorporation
of WMA additive R lowered the ability of permanent deformation
resistance of recycled binders. Moreover, two linear regression
equations are conducted for all the recycled binders, except the
RAP-R binder in Fig. 4. It is inferred that the rheological property
of recycled binder was changed with the addition of WMA additive
R, especially at high temperature regardless of any aging state. In
addition, it can be observed from Fig. 4(b) that when the RAP-R
binder is subjected to short-term aging, there is no linear increas-
ing tendency found between the failure temperatures and the arti-
ficial RAP contents. Even so, the RAP-R binder has higher failure
temperature than virgin asphalt PG 58-22 due to the incorporation
of artificial RAP binder.
100
Control RAP-M RAP-R
y = 9244.9e-0.058x y = 8901e-0.059x
10 R² = 0.9856 R² = 0.988
Slope

0.98 are obtained. Obviously, the slope of RAP-R binder is the low- y = 1325.3e-0.049x
est. It is inferred that the RAP-R binder was less susceptible to the R² = 0.98
1
temperature with the incorporation of WMA additive R.

4.2. DSR tests analysis

0.1
115 135 155 175 195
4.2.1. Failure temperature results Temprature ( )
It is known that the higher failure temperature values from the
DSR test demonstrate that the binders are less susceptible to per- Fig. 3. Slope of regression equations.
62 W. Wang et al. / Construction and Building Materials 147 (2017) 58–65

72 100.0
Control RAP-M RAP-R
71
Failure Temperature ( )

30%-Control

G*/sinδ (kPa)
70
10.0 30%-RAP-M
69
30%-RAP-R
68
y = 0.108x + 62.72 1.0kPa 70%-Control
67 1.0
R² = 0.9828 70%-RAP-M
66
y = 0.106x + 63.44 70%-RAP-R
65 R² = 0.9933
0.1
64 46 52 58 64 70 76
(a) 30 40 50 60 70 80 (a)
RAP content (%) Temperature ( )

10.0
71 (b)
70 Control RAP-M RAP-R 30%-Control
Failure Temperature ( )

69 2.2kPa 30%-RAP-M

G*/sinδ (kPa)
68
30%-RAP-R
67 1.0
66 y = 0.097x + 60.93 70%-Control
R² = 0.9896
65 70%-RAP-M
64 y = 0.103x + 60.21 70%-RAP-R
63 R² = 0.9941
62 0.1
61
30 40 50 60 70 80
(b) 52 58 64 70 76
(b) RAP content (%)
Temperature ( )
Fig. 5. G*/sin d values of RWMA binders at various test temperatures: (a) unaged
Fig. 4. Failure temperature of recycled binders: (a) unaged binder, (b) RTFO binder.
binder, (b) RTFO binder.

40
With respect to the contribution of WMA additive M to the
recycled binders, Fig. 4(a) exhibits a higher failure temperature of 30
G*/sinδ (kPa)

the RAP-M binder than the control recycled binder. In contrast, 46 -Control
when the binders are subjected to a short-term aging, the results 46 -RAP-M
20
are different as shown in Fig. 4(b). It implies that the RAP-M binder 46 -RAP-R
had a better ability to resist short-term aging, since aged asphalt 52 -Control
led to the improvement of the rutting resistance. 10
52 -RAP-M
52 -RAP-R
0
4.2.2. Rutting resistance factor results (a) 30 40 50 60 70 80
Rutting resistance factor (G⁄/sind) is the parameter for the RAP content (%)
assessment of permanent deformation at high temperature for
unaged and RTFO binders, respectively. In this study, two parts
8
are divided to analyze the G⁄/sin d values of recycled binders with 58 -Control
and without WMA additives. The first part deals with investigating 58 -RAP-M
the G⁄/sin d values at different test temperatures, while the second 6
G*/sinδ (kPa)

58 -RAP-R
is to take into account the different artificial RAP binder content.
64 -Control
Firstly, similar trends are found for different artificial RAP bin-
4 64 -RAP-M
der contents, thus only the G⁄/sin d values of recycled binders with
and without WMA additives containing minimum (30%) and max- 64 -RAP-R
imum content (70%) are illustrated in Fig. 5 for brevity. Obviously, 2 70 -Control
as the temperature increases, a lower G⁄/sin d value is obtained 70 -RAP-M
regardless of artificial RAP binder contents and WMA additives. 0 70 -RAP-R
According to the Superpave asphalt binder specification, G⁄/sin 30 40 50 60 70 80
d should be higher than 1.0 kPa for virgin asphalt and higher than (b) RAP content (%)
2.2 kPa for short-term aged asphalt. In Fig. 5(a), all the G⁄/sin d val-
ues satisfy the specification at 64 °C. Then it can be observed that Fig. 6. G*/sin d values of unaged recycled binders with different RAP binder
when the temperature reaches 70 °C, only the control recycled bin- contents.

der and RAP-M binder containing 70% artificial RAP binder satisfy
the specification. Meanwhile, similar trends can be found for recy-
cled asphalt binders subjected to the short-term aging as shown in
Fig. 5(b). The difference is that there are no recycled binders with
or without WMA additives greater than 2.2 kPa at 70 °C. Therefore,
compared with virgin asphalt, the performance grade (PG) for high
temperature of recycled binders containing high percentage artifi-
cial RAP binder is improved by one at least.
Furthermore, some good exponential relationships are estab-
lished for each recycled binder and all the coefficients of determi-
nations (R2) are approximately 1.0.
 W. Wang et al. / Construction and Building Materials 147 (2017) 58–65 63

Secondly, considering the effect of artificial RAP content on G⁄/- 7000

19 -Control
sin d, Fig. 6 shows that the artificial RAP binder improves the per-
6000 19 -RAP-M
manent deformation resistance regardless of the test temperature
5000 19 -RAP-R
and WMA additives. In addition, the incorporation of WMA addi-

tive M is contributed to the permanent deformation resistance
since the G⁄/sin d values of the RAP-M binder are greatest, whereas
the addition of WMA additive R is on the contrary. However, the
difference among the recycled binders with and without WMA
additives diminishes as the temperature continues to rise. From
Fig. 6, it can be observed that the addition of WMA additive R
can offset the property of RAP binder, nevertheless, all the G⁄/sin
d values of the binders containing artificial RAP binder are greater
than that of virgin asphalt at 58 °C as shown in Table 1. In this
regard, the influence of artificial RAP binder on high-temperature
performance is greater in comparison of WMA additives.
Moreover, it could be observed that the increasing trends are all
presented good linear relationship between the G⁄/sin d values and
the artificial RAP contents. And an increment of temperature
results in a reduction of increasing rate of G⁄/sin d values. Conse-
quently, similar with the viscosity, when the temperature reaches
one limit, the effect of RAP binder content on the permanent defor-
mation resistance could almost be negligible.
After short-term aging, the G⁄/sin d values of recycled binders
are shown in Fig. 7. Some difference can be found between Figs. 6
and 7, which is consistent to the analysis of failure temperature.
Thus it was still important to consider the influence of mixing
and compaction process on the recycled binders with WMA addi-
tives even though the temperature of those processes was reduced
compared with control recycled binder.
4.2.3. Fatigue factor results
The fatigue factor (G⁄sin d) is used to determine the resistance
of the repeated loading behavior of asphalt binder [19]. The tests
are performed from 25 °C to the temperature that the fatigue factor
values are greater than 5000 kPa and the results are depicted in
Fig. 8. As expected, the G⁄sin d values increase as the artificial
RAP content increases regardless of temperature and WMA addi-
tives, which suggests that the increment of artificial RAP contents
had a negative effect on the property of fatigue resistance. It can be
observed from Fig. 8 that when the temperature is higher than
19 °C, all the recycled binders with and without WMA additives
satisfy the requirement of specification. On the other hand, only
the RAP-R binders and RAP-M binder containing 30% percentage
artificial RAP binder are lower than 5000 kPa when the tempera-
ture is 19 °C. Thus the recycled binders with WMA additives have
a potential to resist the fatigue cracking in comparison to the con-
trol recycled binders, especially with the incorporation of WMA
additive R. Additionally, this increasing trends of the artificial
G*sin δ (kPa)
22 -Control
4000
22 -RAP-M
3000 22 -RAP-R
2000 25 -Control
25 -RAP-M
1000
25 -RAP-R
0
30 40 50 60 70 80
RAP content (%)
Fig. 8. G*sin d values of recycled binders with different RAP binder content.
RAP contents and G⁄sin d values present linear increment with high
coefficients of determinations (R2 > 0.9).
4.3. BBR test analysis
Given that BBR test is a method to evaluate the property of low
temperature cracking resistance, a lower creep stiffness and a
higher m-value are expected to be obtained to diminish the chance
for low temperature cracking [30]. Similar trends are observed for
different artificial RAP contents, thus only the recycled binders
containing 70% artificial RAP binder are illustrated in Fig. 9 typi-
cally. As expected, lower temperature causes higher stiffness and
lower m-value regardless of WMA additives. Additionally, the stiff-
ness and m-value of the recycled binders with and without WMA
additives satisfy the Superpave specification at 12 °C. In this con-
text, the recycled binders were not susceptible to low temperature
even though the percentage of artificial RAP binder was up to 70%
in comparison to the virgin asphalt (PG 58-22).
With respect to the effect of the WMA additives, in Fig. 9, the
introduction of WMA additive R leads to a better property of low
temperature cracking resistance due to its lower stiffness and
higher m-value. Besides, there are approximately equivalent
results between the control recycled binder and the RAP-M binder.
In order to further investigate the low-temperature perfor-
mance of recycled binders with and without WMA additives, the
continuous grading temperature is calculated according to the
ASTM D7643-10 [31]. As shown in Fig. 9, three exponential and lin-
ear regression equations are conducted corresponding to the stiff-
ness and m-value with temperature, respectively. All the
coefficients of determinations (R2) are greater than 0.99. Thus,
the continuous grading temperature is calculated with stiffness
and m-value following the equations below separately and the
results are exhibited in Fig. 10.

10
1000 0.5
8 Stiffness m-value
58 -Control 300MPa
G*/sin δ (kPa)

0.4
58 -RAP-M
Stiffness (MPa)

6
100 0.3
58 -RAP-R 0.3
m-value

4 64 -Control Control
y = 33.51e-0.152x y = 0.0138x + 0.5088
R² = 0.9952 R² = 0.9909
0.2
64 -RAP-M 10 y = 24.399e-0.164x y = 0.0143x + 0.5324
2 RAP-R
R² = 0.9988 R² = 0.9987
64 -RAP-R 0.1
RAP-M y = 34.179e-0.154x y = 0.0146x + 0.5275
0 R² = 0.9949 R² = 0.9997
30 40 50 60 70 80 1 0
RAP content (%) -18 -15 -12 -9 -6
Temperature ( )
Fig. 7. G*/sin d values of short-term aged recycled binders with different RAP binder
contents. Fig. 9. BBR results of recycled binders containing 70% RAP binder content.
64 W. Wang et al. / Construction and Building Materials 147 (2017) 58–65

-27 data. Therefore, it is necessary to perform some further tests with

Caculated with stiffness
Continuous grading temperature (℃)

the RAP binders extracted from milled asphalt pavement materials

Caculated with m-vaule of different sources to explain the reason and identify the effect of
-26
the artificial or actual RAP binder contents on the property of the
low temperature cracking resistance of recycled binders with and
-25 without WMA additives.

-24 5. Conclusions

This paper focuses on a laboratory performance investigation of

-23
recycled binders containing high artificial RAP binder contents
(30–70%) with two types of WMA additives. Based on the test
-22 results and analyses from this study, the following conclusions
Control RAP-R RAP-M can be drawn:

Fig. 10. Continuous grading temperature of recycled binders.

(1) At any given test temperature higher artificial RAP binder
content resulted in higher viscosity. The incorporation of
the WMA additive R decreased the viscosity remarkably,
250 0.4 whereas the viscosity of the RAP-M binder changed slightly
0.39 S-Control in comparison to the control recycled binder.
200 (2) The interaction between the artificial RAP binder and WMA
0.38 S-RAP-M
Stiffness (MPa)

additives played an important role in determining the per-

150
100
50
0 0.32
30 40 50
RAP content (%)
Fig. 11. BBR results of recycled binders at 12 °C.
 
log 10 ðSs Þ  log 10 ðS1 Þ
Tc ¼ T1 þ
log 10 ðS2 Þ  log 10 ðS1 Þ
 
ms  m1
Tc ¼ T1 þ ðT 2  T 1 Þ
m2  m1
where:
Tc – Continuous grading temperature, °C
T1 – Lower of the two test temperatures, °C
T2 – Higher of the two test temperatures, °C
S1, S2, m1, m 2 – Stiffness and m-value at T1, T2, respectively
Ss, ms – Stiffness, m-value of specification requirement
In general, the lower continuous grading temperature causes
the better low-temperature performance. From Fig. 10, it can be
observed that the addition of WMA additive R degrades the contin-
uous grading temperature significantly. In contrast, RAP-M binder
slightly increases the continuous grading temperature compared
with the control binder. It is inferred that WMA additive R could
improve the low temperature cracking resistance noticeably, while
M was just on contrary.
However, regarding the influence of artificial RAP binder con-
tent, Fig. 11 illustrates that as an indicator for evaluation of the
property of low temperature cracking resistance, the BBR test
results have no remarkable change with increment of the artificial
RAP binder contents. Moreover, there were no difference occurred
when authors tested again. Even when the 100% percentage of arti-
ficial RAP binder was tried, the test result was the same. Generally,
the process of asphalt aging is an important factor that leads to the
low temperature cracking of asphalt pavement, whereas the
artificial RAP binder content had little influence on the BBR test
0.37 formance of recycled binders. Increasing the RAP binder con-
S-RAP-R
0.36 tent could improve the permanent deformation resistance
m-Control but increase the fatigue risk of recycled binders. Particularly,
0.35
the combined effect of the WAM additive R and RAP binder
m-RAP-M
0.34 could offset the properties. Besides, the incorporation of M
0.33 m-RAP-R could improve the both properties.
(3) The incorporation of the WMA additive R led to better low
60 70
temperature cracking resistance; whereas, the behavior of
WMA additive M exhibited an opposite tendency in compar-
ison with that of R. It should be noted that the artificial RAP
binder content had little effect on the BBR test results. Fur-
ther studies should be carried out to explore the relationship
between RAP binder content and low temperature cracking
ðT 2  T 1 Þ ð1Þ resistance.
(4) The recycled binders with and without WMA additives all
satisfied the requirement of specifications due to the com-
bined effect of artificial RAP binder and WMA additives. In
ð2Þ
addition, most of test results exhibited an obvious linear or
exponential relationship between the RAP binder content
and performance tests results. In this regard, the percentage
of RAP binder could increase with WMA technology.
(5) It is recommended that further work should be conducted
on the comparison between the RAP binder extracted from
different sources of milling pavement and the artificial RAP
binder. Furthermore, it is necessary to carry out some chem-
ical tests to study the mechanism of recycled binders with
WMA additives and develop synthesis research to character-
ize the properties from macro and micro scales respectively.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Dalian Science and Technology
Project.
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