Research On Life Cycle Energy Consumption Of Asphalt Pavement

It is a long?term strategic task for China to construct energy?efficient and environment?friendly society. Due to huge resource consumption and poisonous gas emissions, the transportation is listed as a major as of energy conservation and emission reduction. Road infrastructures are bases and lifelines for development of national economy. At the same time, they also consume lots of energy and resources.Asphalt highway needs considerable investment. Due to huge resource consumption and negative environment influence, the key project which is related to daily traffic attracts much attention of the industry in energy conservation and emission reduction aspects.This paper carries out evaluation and research about energy consumption during the life span of the road project. This could help us understand energy consumption of different links, such as procurement of raw materials, construction, maintenance, and recycling. This is also instrumental to objective and comprehensive comparison of energy consumption of different road project technologies. In addition, this contributes to road design and construction optimization, so as to lower energy consumption of various links.This paper determines physical energy consumption parameters of asphalt,cement, steels, and aggregates by looking up literatures. Through on?site investigation,this paper determines energy consumption during mix, transportation and paving of hot mixed asphalt, cold in?plant recycling, cold on?site recycling, and cement stabilized macadam. By looking up literatures, this paper identifies energy consumption of concreate pavement and graded aggregate site. Through analysis of pavement structure of a two?way four?lane turnpike, this paper concludes the energy consumption of five pavement structures and them compares them. The research outcome indicates the physical energy consumption of cement concrete pavement is higher than that of asphalt concrete. Cement contributes the most in terms of the physical energy consumption of raw materials in semi?rigid base asphalt concrete pavement and cement concrete pavement. Asphalt contributes the most in terms of the physical energy consumption of raw materials in full depth asphalt concreate pavement. Construction energy consumption of asphalt concrete pavement mainly exists in the mix stage and that of the cement concrete pavement mainly exists in the paving stage. After giving comprehensive consideration to total energy consumption of the physical consumption and construction stage, this paper finds these two pavement structures show high proportions in energy consumption of physical stage of raw materials contribute. For cement concreate pavement, this proportion has registered around 95%.