Assessment of Flexible Pavement Containing Rubberized Asphalt

This work deals with a practical method of using crumb rubber resulting from waste tires to produce modified bitumen via a wet mixing method for road construction in Iraq. Due to wide variation in temperatures and over-loading traffic in Iraq, rutting deformation is the most observed structural pavement problem. Also, tire wear and tear are higher in Iraq than in other countries due to high temperature and dry weather most of the year, which makes considerable amounts of waste tire piles easily accessible. Utilizing this waste material could be crucial to the environment and economy of the country, as well as to the sustainability of resources. Using waste tire materials as bitumen modifiers in the production of hot mix asphalt is a widely practiced experiment, although it is applied differently depending on the weather, type of bitumen used, and its availability. In the methodology of this research, it is suggested to modify asphalt grades 60/70 by a certain amount of crumb rubber (5–20%). The modified asphalt and asphalt grade 40/50 were used in preparing two types of asphalt concretes to examine their volumetric properties and evaluate their rutting behavior. The results for both mixtures were compared to the Iraqi General Specifications for Roads and Bridges (SORB/R9). The findings showed significant improvements in Marshall stability and flow, as well as in the percentages of voids satisfied in the modified mixture. After using rubberized asphalt in the mixture, the rutting depth was recorded below 20 mm and decreased by 30% and 26% at temperatures of 40 °C and 60 °C, respectively, compared to the controlled mixture.