Special Issue on Energy-Efficient and Environmentally Friendly Paving Materials

The paving industry and its agency partners are constantly looking for ways to improve pavement performance, increase construction efficiency, conserve resources, and advance environmental stewardship. Innovations in material technologies continuously developed have opened exciting opportunities toward this. Some examples include high performance concrete, self-compacting concrete, warm-mix asphalt (WMA), recycled materials, and nano-materials. Among the issues arising from the use of these materials are performance, durability, compatibility, and environmental effects. Others regarding the implementation such as material design, cost analysis, specifications, and quality control also require a lot of research effort.

The aim of this special issue is to provide a forum for researchers, practitioners, and industry experts to exchange information and ideas about energy-efficient and environmentally friendly materials in the paving field. This special issue contains 10 technical papers and two technical notes. Three papers on reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) studies (by Huang et al., Swamy et al., and Mohammad et al.) present the performance of hot-mix asphalt (HMA) mixtures containing RAP, including its cracking resistance, volumetric, stiffness, strength, and low-temperature properties. Another complement (by Han et al.) explores the application of geocell-reinforced RAP in base courses over weak subgrades. WMA technologies, recently developed in Europe, are gaining strong interest in field practice in the United States, and this special issue collects two papers about the understanding and application of WMA technologies (by Cheng et al. and Liu et al.). This special issue also covers how these environmentally conscious materials, such as self-consolidating concrete, antifreeze concrete, and WMA, lead to economic and effective solutions to pavement needs, especially as they are applied and modeled for aggressive environments (by Lomboy et al., Barna et al., and Liu et al.). Other material innovations resulting from the growing call for sustainable solutions are also discussed in this special issue, including cement-stabilized granite mill tailings (by Qian et al.), biobinder from swine manure (by Fini et al.), and recycled asphalt shingles (RAS) (by You et al.).

It is hoped that the papers in this special issue will serve as useful references for research and practice to follow. We would like to express our sincere thanks to all the authors and reviewers of this special issue. Special thanks are also extended to the Journal’s editor in chief, Professor Antonio Nanni, and to the ASCE publishing office personnel for their help and support during the production of this special issue.