Influence of curing process on the moisture loss, mechanical and performance characteristics of cold recycled asphalt mixes

Abstract

Improper curing of cold asphalt mixes can result in excessive moisture that can significantly impact the performance characteristics accompanied by premature failures. The present research investigated the impact of different curing temperatures and curing periods of 100% Cold Recycled (CR) mixes stabilised with foamed and emulsified asphalt. The results show that curing regime profoundly impacts the moisture loss and rate of evolution of the CR-Mix’s stiffness properties. CR-Foam mixes resulted in a higher resilient modulus (Mr) than the CR-Emulsion mixes at most curing regime conditions. The study also confirmed that Mr of CR-Mixes with the same residual moisture content is dependent on curing temperature. Hence, it is concluded that retained moisture content may not be an appropriate criterion for curing of cold recycled (CR) layer because the stiffness achieved by the CR layer is different at different curing temperatures. It is recommended to adopt stiffness as the criterion to evaluate adequate curing.