Laboratory Evaluation and Pavement Design for Warm Mix Asphalt

For many years, the asphalt industry has been aware of the energy savings and environmental benefits inherent in cold mix or warm mix asphalt technologies. Environmental awareness and the need for improved energy efficiency has increased rapidly over the past few years and extensive measures such as the air pollution reduction targets set by the European Union under the Kyoto Protocol have encouraged efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Warm mix asphalt (WMA) is one technology that is gaining popularity in the industry in response to these effort. The objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of WMA made Aspha-min using the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG). An asphalt mixture with a nominal maximum size of 12.5mm (1/2”) and PG64-28 binder was used. A control mixture, WMA with 0.3% of Aspha-min, and WMA with 0.5% of Aspha-min were tested and the test results were used in the MEPDG. The results from the MEPDG are also discussed.