Investigation of Rutting Performance of WMA Mixtures Containing Copper Slag

Abstract

<span>Copper slag (CS) is an abrasive blasting grit made of granulated slag from metal smelting processes. As copper slags <span>are known to be waste material and cause a lot of environmental problems, it would be a good idea to use them in <span>different sections of industry such as pavement construction. On the other hand, in order to save energy and reduce <span>the amount of pollutants released during the construction of asphalt pavements, the technology of Warm Mix Asphalt <span>(WMA) is developing considerably. A very high amount of copper slag is produced in south of Iran where the weather <span>is considered to be hot and rutting is the most important distress of asphalt concretes. This paper presents the influence <span>of utilization of copper slag as fine material on the rutting performance of warm mixed asphalt. A laboratory study has <span>been conducted on five asphalt mixtures with various CS contents, namely; 0%, 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% by weight <span>of total aggregates. The amount of optimum bitumen and the value of Marshall Stability (MS) were determined with <span>MS test for the samples. Then creep test and wheel track tests were conducted on the produced samples. The results <span>indicated that the use of 20% CS in WMA enhances the marshal stability and rutting performance of WMA mixtures. <span>However, the resistance of mixtures against rutting falls substantially by adding more than 20% CS.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span>