Engineering

Asphalt pavement

Materials science

Asphalt

Cracking

Glass fiber

Composite material

Fiber

Fracture (geology)

Forensic engineering

Glass recycling

Construction and Building Materials

Escalating the price of asphalt binder and environmental issues have led to an increasing desire to use high amounts of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) material in asphalt mixtures. However, increasing the RAP content may have negative effects on some characteristics of asphalt mixtures, such as cracking resistance. Therefore, finding an approach to compensate for the negative impacts of RAP material may be considered as a solution to raise the RAP content in asphalt mixtures. Fibers are known as one of the modifiers that are added directly to the mixtures and enhance the cracking resistance of asphaltic materials. Therefore, in this study, the cracking behavior of asphalt mixtures containing different percentages of RAP material in combination with glass fibers was investigated using the semi-circular bending (SCB) fracture tests at temperatures of −15, 0 and 15 °C. The results showed that using up to 0.12% glass fiber leads to a significant enhancement in resistance of all mixtures against crack initiation and propagation. Moreover, it was found that the negative impact of RAP material on the crack resistance of asphalt mixtures is reversible to a great extent using 0.12% glass fiber, and 100% RAP mixtures are applicable without any significant reduction in crack resistance.

Crack resistance of hot mix asphalt containing different percentages of reclaimed asphalt pavement and glass fiber