Quality Assurance of Steel Slag Asphalt Mixtures for Sustainable Pavement Surface Courses

Abstract

The present study investigates the use of electric arc furnace (EAF) steel slag, a by-product of the steel industry, in asphalt pavement surface courses instead of virgin aggregates (VAs). Therefore, a general performance evaluation of such mixtures compared to conventional mixtures is carried out through laboratory and in situ tests, while both mixtures are environmentally assessed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) tool. The results of the laboratory and in situ tests show that asphalt mixtures containing granulated EAF slag aggregates perform as well as mixtures containing only VA. In addition, the LCA results show that the use of EAF slag aggregates in the asphalt surface course has a lower environmental impact than the exclusive use of VA when it comes to the impact categories of acidification, climate change, marine and terrestrial eutrophication, energy consumption and photochemical pollution. In summary, these results show that replacing virgin aggregates with a proportion of EAF slag aggregate is a viable and sustainable method for road pavement construction.