Sustainability assessment for portland cement concrete pavement containing reclaimed asphalt pavement aggregates

The lack of quantitative sustainability assessments of use of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) in portland cement concrete (PCC) as an aggregate replacement for pavement applications has impeded the field application of pavements built with PCC containing RAP (RAP-PCC). This paper presents a life cycle inventory analysis in order to fill the gap of research and encourage a wider use of PCC made with RAP aggregates as paving materials. Three different types of pavements, namely a single-lift pavement made of plain PCC slab, a single-lift pavement made of RAP-PCC slab, and a two-lift concrete pavement using RAP-PCC as the bottom lift material, were designed, followed by an extensive sustainability assessment via the economic input-out life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) approach. Based on the EIO-LCA results, the economic, social, and environmental benefits of utilization of RAP-PCC for pavement applications were clearly demonstrated. Among all three studied pavements in this case study, the single-lift RAP-PCC pavement could yield the highest economic benefits, while the two-lift construction using RAP-PCC in the bottom lift could have the highest positive impacts from social and environmental perspective.