FIRST TEST SECTIONS USING BITUMINOUS MIXES WITH ADDITION OF CRUMB RUBBER FROM WASTE TIRES, FOR URBAN PAVING APPLICATIONS IN ARGENTINA

摘要

The use of solid waste generated by human activities has taken a very important impulse in the world in the last decades, fundamentally associated with environmental protection. Great quantity of tires are overturned daily in the landfills of the surroundings of Buenos Aires. It has been one of the reasons that have impelled to the authorities to look for a solution to this problem. This way, it has been thought the possibility to perform a test project using rubber of waste tires as a component material of hot bituminous mixes for pavement tasks, in an important avenue of Buenos Aires City. The ultimate aim is to verify the feasibility of this technology for urban paving layers by evaluating the service conditions for short and long terms and comparing its behavior with other experimental sections: some of them executed with the base binders only and the others with addition of asphaltite. Previous studies for the design procedure of an asphalt mix with rubber addition by the dry process are also reported, as well as the elaboration and construction conditions. Particularly, emphasis has been made in the concept of "digestion time", to be considered a parameter of fundamental importance for this addition modality of crumb rubber to the mixture. It is also included a later analysis about the effects of rubber addition on performance-related properties of the base asphalt cement.