The GENERAL OBJECTIVE of the ASFIVAL project is to collaborate in the reduction of the roads economic and environmental impact through the optimized design of new bituminous mixtures incorporating waste fibers to improve their mechanical performance. The use of recycled and valorized fibers coming from different industrial processes contributes to reduce the needs for raw materials of an infrastructure that is normally characterized by a high consumption of resources. An asphalt concrete and a porous mixture will be designed with conventional binders, modified with waste fibers, in order to reach a performance similar to that achieved with polymer-modified binders, thus resulting in lower environmental and economic impacts along the road life cycle.
The OPPORTUNITY of the project is clearly improve Sustainable, Smart, Connected and Integrated Transport. Thus, in the ASFIVAL project previously valorized waste fibers will be reused to develop new bituminous mixtures which, in line with the Challenge objectives, are characterized by lower raw materials usage, energy consumption and carbon emissions during their manufacturing and lay-down processes, as well as by a recyclability potential that optimizes the maintenance and rehabilitation operations of the road infrastructure.
The expected results IMPACT is clear and of great relevance for the industry, public administration, final user and society in general:
The main BREAKTHROUGS of this project on the state-of-the-art will consist of: substitution of commercial fibers by fibers coming from waste or industrial by-products; selection of the fibers as depending on the type of mixture; the use of a conventional bitumen for the design of an asphalt concrete and a porous mixture that are optimised according to the characteristics of the waste fibers; the analysis by numerical simulation of the influence of the selected fibers; the assessment of the recyclability of the experimental mixtures; and the quantification of the economic