Urban mining for low-noise urban roads

In the short video here above, PhD student external page Zhengyin Piao gives a brief overview of the project (if the video is not available in your region, please use external page this link).

Semi-dense asphalt (SDA) pavement is an emerging type of road with low-noise benefits. In Switzerland, nearly 1000 SDA pavements have been constructed. Compared to the conventional pavements, SDA can effectively reduce the noise due to tire-road interactions. However, the porous structure of SDA leads to short service life, indicating higher consumptions of raw materials than the conventional. In addition, SDA requires the asphalt binder with polymer modification, increasing the cost and environmental burdens.
To reduce the consumption of virgin materials and cost, this project investigates urban mining to use recycled materials in SDA pavements. Based on the previous publications, various recycled materials (end-of-life tires, recycled concretes, waste plastics, etc.) are screened considering their quantities, legislation limits and effects on the mechanical performance of pavements. The selected recycled materials are processed and included in the SDA mix design, with a series of mechanical tests (water sensitivity, rutting, fatigue, etc.) being conducted. Additionally, the environmental impacts for using these recycled materials are studied by life cycle assessment (LCA), focusing on the burden shifts through the supply chain.

external page Link

Collaboration

This project is a collaborative work between ETH and external page Empa.