Developing Sustainable Pavement Concrete Mix Using Portland Limestone Cement and Blended Aggregates Techniques

Abstract

With the increasing price and carbon dioxide emission of cement comes the challenge of rigid pavement. One of the solutions to address this issue is minimizing the cementitious paste volume (CPV) of the concrete mix with the blended aggregates (BA) technique. This paper presents the effects of minimizing the CPV in Portland limestone cement (PLC) concrete with CPV reduction and BA application for Florida rigid pavement concrete. The findings indicated that reducing the CPV in the pavement concrete mix to some extent would not adversely affect the properties of the pavement concrete; the minimum CPV of PLC pavement concrete mixes can be reduced to 22.5% with no loss in the properties of fresh and hardened concrete. The other benefits of CPV reduction include low permeability and shrinkage strain. In summary, minimizing the CPV and utilizing the BA technique can be considered to design sustainable pavement concrete mixes with better pavement performance, lower materials costs, and lower global warming potential.