Study of the cure of CIR and FDR emulsion treated materials

The proposed research project is on asphalt rehabilitation materials called cold in-place recycling (CIR) and full depth reclamation (FDR). Those pavement rehabilitation techniques are gaining popularity because of their lower cost and their lower environmental footprint than conventional pavement reconstruction. In both case, asphalt pavement, and a part of the granular base for FDR, are pulverized and mixed with asphalt emulsion, at room temperature, before being compacted. In the field, those materials have proven their efficiency. In order to characterize those in laboratory, there is a need to make a cure. The cure is the time that the material needs to reach its bearing capacity. There is actually no standardized cure which results in very different mechanical results from the specimens from different laboratory. In this project, it’s proposed to study the effect of the length and temperature of the cure. Post-compaction, to simulate the effect of traffic during the cure, will also be studied. For that, the student will test different mix with different curing protocol in the hope to better understand the cure and established a universal cure methodology.

Faculty Supervisor:

Alan Carter

Student:

Marc-André Bérubé

Partner:

Discipline:

Engineering - civil

Sector:

University:

École de technologie supérieure

Program:

Globalink Research Award