Cold Mix Asphalt: towards increased understanding of the governing mechanisms and long-term effects

Project name: Cold Mix Asphalt: towards increased understanding of the governing mechanisms and long-term effects
Project leader: Romain Balieu, Highway and Railway Engineering
Participation partner: IVL Svenska Miljöinstitutet
Project period: 2024-11-01 till 2028-10-31
Funding: KCVHoppas

To achieve sustainable road transport infrastructure, it is essential to reduce resource usage, energy consumption, and environmental impact in pavement construction and maintenance. Additionally, pavement materials should minimize pollution, enhance safety, and provide road users with comfort. Cold Mix Asphalt (CMA) that uses bitumen emulsions to bind aggregates without the need for heating or drying offers a promising solution. With this technology, binders in form of bitumen emulsions are mixed with aggregates at ambient temperature, saving energy and simplifying road construction operations compared to Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA). CMA eliminates the need to handle hot materials, reducing associated risks, and allows production in longer seasons. Widespread adoption of CMA could significantly contribute to environment-friendly road transport infrastructure. Based on the identified knowledge gaps and research questions, this project will study the bitumen emulsion technology for CMA for a better understanding of the mixing process and evolution of bitumen emulsions for developing high-performance CMA for pavements. Furthermore, the project aims to assess the long-term performance of the CMA technology as well as its impact on sustainability of roads. To achieve the objectives, experiments and numerical modeling on bitumen emulsions, binders, and CMA mixtures will be conducted. Finally, predictions of long- term performance using Finite Element analyses will be coupled to a Life Cycle Assessment framework to evaluate the impact of the CMA technology on road sustainability.