Early life field performance of innovative sustainable semi-flexible pavements

Semi-flexible pavements in heavy loads areas are recommended to guarantee good perfor- mance and safety. They are usually constructed by placing a wearing layer of grouted mac- adam, a composite material consisting of a porous Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) skeleton grouted with a cementitious matrix. However, its use is limited as the production process is quite complex and laborious. An effective alternative to grouted macadam can be represented by the Ready to Mix (RTM), recently implemented to offer performances comparable to those of the grouted macadam and a most effortless put-in-place process, and contemporarily leading to environmental and economic advantages. The present research investigated the early life field performance of a semi-flexible pavement including an RTM base. Three Falling Weight Deflectometer testing campaigns were carried out from 2017 to 2021. In particular, the semi-flexible pavement was compared to a reference flexible pavement entirely made with HMA in terms of temperature sensitivity as well as bearing capacity.