Abstract

Concrete is the main material used in the construction industry not only for the ability to produce infinite variety of shapes for precast forms and for its characteristics of high resistance to compression, but primarily for their low manufacturing cost. Nonetheless, the production by mixing cement, fine aggregate, coarse aggregate and water, using natural raw materials such as stone, sand and water, despite being plentiful, represent the consumption of millions of tons of natural resources. Thus, the continuous search for new solutions is fundamental in order to not only further lower the manufacturing costs of this essential component in construction, but also to seek alternative materials, those of origin in processes of sustainability

Abstract

Porous asphalt is a type of mixture characterized by having high air void percentages that offers multiple benefits when used in wearing courses in terms of driving safety, water flow management, and noise reduction. However, the durability of porous asphalt (PA) mixtures is significantly shorter when compared to dense-graded asphalt mixtures. This study investigated the impact of polyolefin-aramid fibers and hydrated lime in the functional and mechanical performance of porous asphalt mixtures. A parametric study based on the concept of design of experiments was carried out through the Taguchi methodology. Accordingly, an experimental design was conducted based on the L18 full factorial orthogonal array. Three control factors-fiber content, binder content, and filler type- were included at various levels, and multiple responses including total air voids, interconnected air voids, particle loss in dry conditions, particle loss in wet conditions, and binder drainage were assessed experimentally. Signal-to-noise ratios were calculated to determine the optimal solution levels for each control factor for the multiple responses. In the second phase of the research, multi-criteria decision-making techniques -namely, criteria importance through inter-criteria correlation and weighted aggregated sum product assessment- were used to transform the multiple-response optimization problem into a single-unique optimization problem and to elaborate a preference ranking among all the mixture designs. The most significant levels for acquiring the optimum overall response value were found to be 0.05% for fiber content and 5.00% for binder content and mixed filler with hydrated lime Funding: TheFORESEEproject has received funding from the European Union?s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No769373. Document type: Article