Project description

Fatigue cracking and permanent deformation are the most common problems that bituminous pavements face. Furthermore, waste plastic disposal has become a great challenge for the current generation due to its large-scale production and its non-degradable properties. Thus, the incorporation of plastic waste into road pavements has been seen as a promising solution to help mitigating the problems related to its disposal problem and even to improve some properties of road pavements.

This PhD project intends to perform research regarding the incorporation of waste plastic into stone mastic asphalt (SMA) mixtures. To this end a literature review will be done to understand how developed this technology is nowadays, which will provide the support to the experimental phase that consists of preforming laboratory tests with mixtures with and without plastic. Finally, the results of the laboratory tests will be used to ascertain the environmental and economic performances of these asphalt mixtures by means of Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life-Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) methodologies, respectively.

Project team

• Josué Cardoso
• Adelino Ferreira (Supervisor)
• Arminda Almeida (Supervisor)
• João Santos (Supervisor)

Financial support

• Financial support provided by Research Centre for Territory, Transports and Environment (CITTA) and Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) Fellowship UI/BD/151112/2021

Stage of progress

• In progress

As it was mentioned before, this PhD thesis consists of three main stages, first is literature review and delimitation of the research’ scope, second is the experimental program performing tests in the road pavements laboratory, and third is ascertaining environmental and economic performances by life-cycle assessment and life-cycle cost analysis methodologies.

So far, the first phase is complete, the second phase is in progress and will be complete till April/2024, while the third phase will be complete till December/2024.