Journal article
Analytical Comparison of Crumb Rubber Wet Blend Asphalt Volumetric Design Approaches
International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology, Vol.Advanced access
15-Jun-2026
Abstract
Crumb rubber modified (CRM) bituminous binders provide a sustainable alternative in pavement engineering by incorporating recycled end of life tire rubber. Significant research has identified the performance and anti-aging benefits associated with CRM asphalt, which is partially attributed to improvements in mixture volumetrics by facilitating thicker binder films through greater effective binder contents. However, Marshall designed asphalt mixtures typically incorporate the whole CRM binder fraction for determination of volumetric properties, irrespective of differences in resultant crumb rubber (CR) particle compositions or morphologies from blending and storage effects. Consequently, conventional volumetric based mixture designs alone may not provide adequate performance or durability properties for CRM asphalt, as effective binder contributions are not understood. This study presents a comparative analysis of volumetric design approaches for a standard 10 mm CRM dense grade asphalt (DGA) prepared from both field and terminally blended CRM binders, to better understand the effective contribution of CR to the bituminous binder phase. Conventional volumetric design calculations were compared against two alternative approaches, where only the CR polymeric components, and the effectively dissolved CR portions through a dissolution based approach, were included as part of the liquid binder phase, respectively. The challenges and limitations associated with each design approach were also examined. It was determined that the dissolution based approach provided more realistic results with respect to effective binder volumes and film thicknesses, and was the only approach to correctly model decreasing binder absorption values with increasing CRM binder viscosities. It was concluded that the alternative approaches more accurately reflected CR binder contributions, and could assist practitioners in the volumetric design of CRM DGA.
Details
- Title
- Analytical Comparison of Crumb Rubber Wet Blend Asphalt Volumetric Design Approaches
- Authors
- Andrew Kidd (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine CoastGreg White - University of the Sunshine Coast
- Publication details
- International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology, Vol.Advanced access
- Publisher
- Springer Singapore
- DOI
- 10.1007/s42947-026-00799-2
- ISSN
- 1997-1400
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Data Availability
- The data used for this research is available on request.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Science, Technology and Engineering
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991242150502621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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