1470

Optimal proportioning for hot recycled mix design

under Superpave mix design consideration
Aravind Krishna Swamy and Animesh Das

Abstract: While performing recycled (central plant) hot mix design as per Superpave mix design criteria, the quantity of
reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) is either assumed fixed, or estimated from other fixed parameter(s). In either of the
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cases, the constituent (RAP, virgin binder, and virgin aggregates) proportions may not necessarily represent a cost-optimal
situation. The present paper develops a generalized formulation for preliminary constituent proportioning of hot recycled
mix following Superpave criteria. Through this formulation an optimal solution for mix proportion can be obtained, where
the total material cost is minimized while satisfying all the binder and mix property requirements.
Key words: optimization, recycling, asphalt concrete, Superpave, mix design.
Résumé : Lors de la formulation d’un recyclé enrobé à chaud (usine centrale) selon les critères de conception du mélange
Superpave, la quantité d’asphalte récupérée (« RAP ») est présumée fixe ou estimée à l’aide d’un ou plusieurs autres para-
mètres fixes. Dans chacun des cas, les proportions des composantes (RAP, liant neuf et agrégats neufs) ne représentent pas
nécessairement la situation la plus optimale en termes de coût. Cet article présente une formulation généralisée du dosage
préliminaire des composantes d’un mélange recyclé enrobé à chaud répondant aux critères Superpave. Une proportion opti-
male du mélange peut être obtenue grâce à cette formulation; dans cette solution, le coût total des matériaux est minimisé
tout en répondant aux exigences de propriétés du liant et du mélange.
Mots-clés : optimisation, recyclage, béton bitumineux, Superpave, formulation.
For personal use only.

[Traduit par la Rédaction]

Introduction proportion solution obtained is always cost optimal. The

The constituents for recycled asphalt concrete mix are re-
claimed asphalt pavement (RAP), virgin binder, and virgin
aggregates. The current Superpave binder specifications
(McDaniel and Anderson 2001; McDaniel et al. 2000) for
central plant hot-mix recycling suggest two alternative for-
mulations for constituent proportioning: (i) when the quan-
tity of RAP is known or (ii) when the grade of virgin
binder is known. Subsequently, using either of the ap-
proaches, the preliminary constituent proportions of the re-
cycled mix can be estimated. The constituent proportion
thus determined may not necessarily represent a situation
where the total material cost is the least.
The present paper translates the Superpave guidelines for
preliminary constituent proportioning (for hot-mix central
plant recycling) into a linear programming (LP) scheme.
The basic formulation of the proposed LP scheme remains
the same irrespective of whether the RAP quantity is known
or the grade of virgin binder is known. Additionally, the
Received 30 March 2008. Revision accepted 8 June 2009.
Published on the NRC Research Press Web site at cjce.nrc.ca on
23 September 2009.
A.K. Swamy1 and A. Das.2 Department of Civil Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, 208 016 India.
Written discussion of this article is welcomed and will be
received by the Editor until 31 January 2010.
1Presentaddress: Department of Civil Engineering, University of
New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA.
2Corresponding author (e-mail: adas@iitk.ac.in).
proposed LP formulation is simple, and any constraint can
be added or dropped without changing the basic formulation.
A designer can simply feed the input parameters to the com-
puter program to obtain the cost-optimal preliminary constit-
uent proportions for the recycled mix.
This paper has six sections of which this is the first sec-
tion. The next section presents relevant background and
identifies the scope of the present work. The Superpave
binder specifications for constituent proportioning are dis-
cussed in the third section. The fourth section presents the
proposed formulation. A numerical example is presented
and solved in the fifth section. The last section contains the
concluding remarks.
Background
There exists varied opinion on the RAP quantity usage in
a recycled asphalt concrete mix. Roberts et al. (1996) sug-
gested that there should be an upper limit of the RAP quan-
tity that can be used in a recycled mix. Studies suggest that
if RAP quantity is less than 15%, the recycled mix behaves
almost similar to virgin mix; that is, there no requirement of
adjusting the grade of the virgin binder (Kennedy et al.
1998a; Austroads 2000; Sondag et al. 2002; Sullivan 1996).
Some studies (McDaniel et al. 2000; Huang et al. 2004;
Kingery 2004) suggest that this threshold level of RAP quan-
tity can be taken as about 20%, and it depends on the stiff-
ness of the RAP binder (McDaniel et al. 2000). While up to
80% of RAP has been used in some hot-mix asphalt pave-
ments (Kennedy et al. 1998a; Huang et al. 2004), 20%–50%
of RAP is typically used (Flynn 1992; Solaimanian and Tah-

Can. J. Civ. Eng. 36: 1470–1477 (2009) doi:10.1139/L09-096 Published by NRC Research Press
 Swamy and Das
moressi 1996; Kennedy et al. 1998a, 1998b; McDaniel et al.
2002) for recycling projects, and use of higher percentages
of RAP in recycled mix is generally not encouraged.
Various agencies and (or) state organizations sometimes
specify RAP quantity in a recycled mix. For example, Geor-
gia Department of Transportation limits the amount of RAP
to 40% for continuous-type plants and 25% for batch-type
plants (Kandhal et al. 1995); in Massachusetts, the propor-
tion of RAP is limited to 40% for drum-mix plants and
20% for modified batch plants (Massachusetts Highway De-
partment 2006); the California State routinely allows 15%
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RAP in recycling projects (California Integrated Waste
Management Board 2006).
As evident from the above discussions, it is difficult to
recommend any fixed quantity of RAP or its upper limit,
which is appropriate for a given recycled mix design prob-
lem. Variability of RAP properties (McDaniel and Anderson
2001; Sondag et al. 2002; Karlsson and Isacsson 2005) is
possibly one of the reasons that can be attributed to this. In
most of the recycled mix design process, therefore, RAP
quantity is either fixed based on experience or derived from
other input information. In either of the scenarios, it cannot
be ensured whether the total material cost could be mini-
mized while satisfying the specification requirements.
This has prompted the present authors to develop a gener-
alized recycled mix design formulation as per Superpave
For personal use only.
recommendations, in which the total material cost is also
minimized during the process of preliminary mix design
(i.e., during the process in which various trial blends are
prepared and (or) tested). The authors have recently devel-
oped a preliminary constituent proportioning scheme for hot
recycled mix design following the viscosity mixing rule
(Aravind and Das 2007). The present study is a fresh at-
tempt by the authors to develop a formulation for hot re-
cycled mix design as per criteria laid down by the
Superpave binder specifications (McDaniel and Anderson
2001; McDaniel et al. 2000; SP-1 2003).
Superpave binder specifications for
constituent proportioning
Guidelines have been developed in Superpave binder
specifications so that the performance of the binder (and the
mix as a whole) is expected to be satisfactory from consid-
erations of (i) tenderness during laying, (ii) fatigue cracking,
(iii) permanent deformation, and (iv) low-temperature crack-
ing (Anderson and Kennedy 1992; Kandhal and Foo 1997;
SP-1 2003). The following are the requirements of accept-
ability for binder as per Superpave binder specifications
(Anderson and Kennedy 1992; SP-1 2003):
(1) G =sin @ of binder should be greater than 1.0 kPa, where
G* is the complex shear modulus and @ is the phase angle.
(2) G =sin @ of binder subjected to rolling thin film oven test
(RTFO) should be greater than 2.2 kPa.
(3) G  sin @ of binder subjected to RTFO and pressurized
aging vessel (PAV) should be less than 5 MPa.
(4) Creep stiffness (S) of the binder should be less than
300 MPa, and slope of (logarithm of) stiffness versus
(logarithm of) time plot (m) should be greater than 0.3.
If the S is between 300 and 600 MPa, the direct tension
1471
failure strain should be less than 1.0%, instead of creep
stiffness requirement.
For any given asphalt binder, there exists a set of temper-
ature ranges, which satisfies the above requirements. Subse-
quently, the definitions of the high, intermediate, and low
temperatures are developed (Anderson and Kennedy 1992;
Kandhal and Foo 1997; SP-1 2003). In fact, the first two
conditions pertain to high temperature, the third condition
pertains to intermediate temperature, and the fourth condi-
tion pertains to the low-temperature criteria. Further discus-
sions on these critical temperatures are placed in the next
section of this paper.
During the recycling process, blending of aged and virgin
binders takes place. By varying the relative proportions (in
the laboratory) between the aged and virgin binders, temper-
ature(s) at which requirements are satisfied can be obtained.
This is how the blending chart is developed (Kandhal and
Foo 1997). A blending chart, as per Superpave binder specifi-
cation, would typically contain binder proportion (between
the aged and virgin binder) as horizontal axis and temperature
as vertical axis. Two scenarios, as the following, are possible:
 Scenario 1: When the (i) design critical temperature, Tdes,
(ii) grade of virgin binder (which is equivalent to a criti-
cal temperature, Tcrvb , of virgin binder), and (iii) critical
temperature of aged binder, Tcrab , are known, the fraction
of virgin binder in blended binder, pvb, can be estimated
from the blending chart as explained schematically in
Fig. 1a. Once the proportion between the aged and virgin
binder is known, the quantity of all the constituents of the
recycled mix can be estimated.
 Scenario 2: When the (i) design critical temperature, Tdes,
(ii) fraction of virgin binder in blended binder, pvb, and
(iii) critical temperature of aged binder, Tcrab , are known,
the critical temperature of the virgin binder, Tcrvb (i.e.,
which is equivalent to the grade of the virgin binder),
can be estimated from the blending chart as explained
schematically in Fig. 1b. That means, in this case, the re-
cycled mix proportions are pre-fixed, and accordingly,
the grade of the virgin binder is obtained.
The Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 basically indicate the same
thing. It is just the known and unknown parameters that are
interchanged between these two scenarios. This blending
chart (Fig. 1) is developed for one particular performance
grade (PG) binder parameter, say, for G =sin @ = 1.0 kPa.
Similarly, it is possible to develop blending charts for other
test parameters. Each blending chart, for given values of
high, intermediate, and low design temperatures, will pro-
vide a particular threshold proportion of virgin binder (pvb),
satisfying the Superpave binder requirements. This concept
is taken up further in the next section.
Before leaving this section, another issue needs to be ad-
dressed on the development of blending charts. In the sche-
matic blending chart presented in Fig. 1, one of the PG
binder parameters is held constant (G =sin @ = 1.0 and
2.2 kPa, as in the present example), and the critical temper-
atures are estimated by varying binder proportions. Simi-
larly, a blending chart can be developed, keeping the
temperature constant. This has been explained diagrammati-
cally in Fig. 2 where the two types of blending charts are
compared as Figs. 2a and 2b. Some researchers (Kandhal
Published by NRC Research Press
 1472 Can. J. Civ. Eng. Vol. 36, 2009

and Foo 1997; Soleymani et al. 1999) have used and (or) de-
veloped blending charts similar to Fig. 2a, whereas some
other researchers (Kennedy et al. 1998a, 1998b) used and
(or) developed blending charts similar to Fig. 2b.
An examination of these two types of blending charts
(Fig. 2) reveals that the trend line is somewhat linear in
Fig. 2a compared to Fig. 2b. For development of the propor-
tioning formulation reported in the present work, a linear-
ized blending chart, similar to that in Fig. 2a, has been
adopted. Thus, it can be written as
½1 Tcrab  pab þ Tcrvb  pvb ¼ Tres
rb
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High-temperature constraints
A typical blending chart for two values G =sin @
(= 1.0 kPa and = 0.2 kPa) is shown in Fig. 3. It shows
rb
that Tres (i.e., response temperature of blended binder) de-
creases with the increase of pvb. It also shows that for a
given proportion of binders, if temperature is increased,
G =sin @ value decreases.
To avoid tenderness during lay down, Superpave binder
specifications (Anderson and Kennedy 1992; SP-1 2003) re-
quire that the blend should retain a minimum value of
G =sin @ as 1.0 kPa. Thus, at a particular proportion of vir-

rb
gin binder, the temperature Tres at which the blended binder
rb mix achieves target stiffness of 1.0 kPa should be greater
where Tres is the response temperature of the blended binder
(i.e., mixture of virgin and aged binder). Equation [1] also than or equal to design temperature from tenderness consid-
involves an assumption that complete blending has taken eration (Tdes,tend). Thus, eq. [3] can be rewritten and posed as
place between the virgin and aged binder. It should be noted a constraint in the form of eq. [4]:
that pvb and pab are expressed as fractions. Thus, the sum of   RAP  
ab Pb R vb R
these two terms is one (i.e., pvb+ pab = 1). This equation is Tcr;tend 100  PRAP þ ðTcr;tend  Pvb Þ
used further for development of the proposed formulation ½4  RAP   Tdes;tend
Pb R R
presented in the next section. 100  PRAP þ ðPvb Þ

Proposed formulation
ab
where Tcr;tend is critical temperature at which G =sin @ of
vb
aged binder is 1.0 kPa, Tcr;tend is critical temperature at
Let the percentages of RAP, virgin binder, and virgin ag- 
which G =sin @ of virgin binder is 1.0 kPa, and Tdes,tend is
gregates be denoted by PRRAP , PRvb , and PRva , respectively. The design temperature at which G =sin @ of blended binder is
present problem of recycled mix proportioning is to estimate 1.0 kPa. Thus, the feasible portion of the blending chart
For personal use only.

the values of PRRAP , PRvb , and PRva for a cost-optimal (lowest (Fig. 3) is marked with a thicker line.
cost) scenario. A linear programming (LP) scheme has been To avoid permanent deformation susceptibility, Superpave
adopted as the optimization tool in the present work. binder specifications (Anderson and Kennedy 1992; SP-1
If the percentage of the binder (aged) in RAP is denoted 2003) require a minimum value of G =sin @ as 2.2 kPa for
by PRAP
b , and the percentage of total binder (aged binder rolling thin film oven (RTFO) tested sample at high design
plus virgin binder) demand in the recycled mix is denoted temperature. Using similar logic as explained previously, an-
as PRb , then one can write, other constraint can be formulated as eq. [5] as follows:
 RAP   R    RAP  
Pb PRAP ab Pb R vb R
pab ¼  Tcr;defor 100  PRAP þ ðTcr;defor  Pvb Þ
100 PRb ½5  RAP   Tdes;defor
Pb R R
100  PRAP þ ðPvb Þ
 
PRvb ab
where Tcr;defor is critical temperature at which G =sin @ of
pvb ¼
PRb vb
aged binder (after RTFO test) is 2.2 kPa, Tcr;defor is critical
and temperature at which G =sin @ of virgin binder (after RTFO
test) is 2.2 kPa, and Tdes;defor is higher design temperature at
 
PRAP which G =sin @ of recycled asphalt binder (after RTFO test)
½2 PRb ¼ b
 PRRAP þ ðPRvb Þ is 2.2 kPa.
100

By substituting these values and rearranging, eq. [1] becomes Intermediate-temperature constraints
  RAP   A typical blending chart for two different values of G 
Pb
Tcrab 100  PRRAP þ ðTcrvb  PRvb Þ sin @ (= 2.0 MPa and = 5.0 MPa) is shown in Fig. 4. It
rb
½3  RAP  rb
¼ Tres shows that Tres decreases with increase of pvb. It also shows
Pb R R
100  PRAP þ ðPvb Þ
that for a given proportion of binders, if temperature is in-
creased, G  sin @ value decreases.
The development of constraint equations as per Superpave To minimize excessive deterioration of pavement due to
binder specifications and the development of the objective fatigue, a maximum value of G  sin @ = 5.0 MPa has
function are discussed in the following sections. been specified by Superpave binder specifications (Anderson
and Kennedy 1992; SP-1 2003) at intermediate design tem-
Development of constraint equations perature. Thus, at a particular proportion of virgin binder,
rb
Following the Superpave binder specifications (McDaniel the temperature ðTres Þ at which blended binder mix achieves

et al. 2000; McDaniel and Anderson 2001; SP-1 2003), the target value of G  sin @ = 5.0 MPa should be less than or
constraint equations can be categorized as high-, intermedi- equal to design temperature (Tdes,fatigue). This condition can
ate-, and low-temperature constraints. These are discussed in be incorporated in eq. [3] and can be presented in the form
the following. of eq. [6] as follows:

Published by NRC Research Press

 Swamy and Das 1473

Fig. 1. Schematic presentation of blending chart: (a) Scenario 1, (b) Fig. 2. Two possible types of blending charts: (a) blending chart with
Scenario 2. constant G =sin @, (b) blending chart with constant temperature.
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For personal use only.

   
ab PRAP
Tcr;fatigue b
100  PRRAP þ ðTcr;fatigue
vb
 PRvb Þ
½6  RAP 
Pb R R
100  PRAP þ ðPvb Þ

 Tdes;fatigue
ab
where Tcr;fatigue is critical temperature at which G  sin @ of
vb
aged binder is 5.0 MPa, Tcr;fatigue is critical temperature at
which G  sin @ of virgin binder is 5.0 MPa, and Tdes,fatigue
is intermediate design temperature at which G  sin @ of
blended binder is 5.0 MPa.
Low-temperature constraints Fig. 3. Blending chart for high-temperature consideration.
A typical blending chart for two different values of creep
stiffness, S ( = 300 MPa and = 400 MPa), is shown in
rb
Fig. 5. It shows that Tres decreases with the increase of pvb.
It also shows that for a given proportion of binders, if tem-
perature is increased, S value decreases.
Stiffer material is more susceptible to low-temperature
cracking. To minimize low-temperature cracking, a maxi-
mum value of S = 300 MPa has been specified by Super-
pave binder specifications (Anderson and Kennedy 1992;
SP-1 2003) at low design temperature. Thus, at a particular
rb
proportion of virgin binder, the temperature ðTres Þ at which
blended binder achieves target, S = 300 MPa, should be less
than or equal to design temperature (Tdes,stiffness). Thus,
eq. [3] can be rewritten and posed as a constraint in the
form of eq. [7] as follows:
  RAP  
ab Pb R vb R
Tcr;stiffness 100  P RAP þ ðTcr;stiffness  Pvb Þ
½7  RAP 
Pb R R
100  PRAP þ ðPvb Þ
vb
ness of aged binder is 300 MPa, Tcr;stiffness is critical tem-
perature at which creep stiffness of virgin binder is
 Tdes;stiffness
300 MPa, and Tdes,stiffness is lower design temperature at
ab which creep stiffness of recycled asphalt binder is 300 MPa.
where Tcr;stiffness is critical temperature at which creep stiff-

Published by NRC Research Press

 1474 Can. J. Civ. Eng. Vol. 36, 2009

Fig. 4. Blending chart for intermediate-temperature consideration. Fig. 5. Blending chart for low temperature from stiffness consid-
eration.
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Also, it is known that the shape of creep compliance mas-  

PRAP
ter curve influences the magnitude of thermal shrinkage ½10 b
 PRRAP þ ðPRvb Þ  PRb
stresses that develop during cooling of pavement (Anderson 100
and Kennedy 1992). Thus, to take care of thermal shrinkage where PRb is upper limit on total binder in recycled mix, PRb
stresses at low temperature, a minimum value of 0.3 is
For personal use only.

specified by Superpave binder specifications (SP-1 2003; is lower limit on total binder in recycled mix.
Anderson and Kennedy 1992) as the slope of creep compli- Sum of percentage of all individual components
ance curve (m). A typical blending chart for two different ðPRRAP ; PRvb ; PRna Þ in the recycled mix should be equal to 100.
values of slopes, m (= 0.2 and = 0.3), is shown in Fig. 6. Thus, the equality constraint is given by eq. [11] as
Proceeding with the similar logic as that of the earlier
½11 PRRAP þ PRvb þ PRva ¼ 100
cases, it can be written as
  RAP   Since some quantity of RAP is essentially used in the re-
ab Pb R vb R
Tcr;slope 100  PRAP þ ðTcr;slope  Pvb Þ cycling process, the percentage of RAP in the recycled mix
½8  RAP   Tdes;slope has to be greater than zero. Thus,
Pb R R
100  PRAP þ ðPvb Þ

ab
½12 PRRAP > 0
where Tcr;slope is critical temperature at which slope of aged
vb
asphalt binder is 0.3, Tcr;slope is critical temperature at which Similarly, the quantity of virgin aggregates to be added is
slope of aged asphalt binder is 0.3, Tdes,slope is lower design greater than or equal to zero. Thus,
temperature at which slope of recycled asphalt binder is 0.3.
½13 PRna  0
Other constraints
The constraints discussed in the above are basically the As discussed in Background of this paper, sometimes
binder proportioning constraints following Superpave binder some restriction of the RAP quantity may be imposed for in-
specifications. Further, the following equations can be sug- dividual recycling projects; in that situation,
gested (Aravind and Das 2007), which act as other con-
straints to the mix proportioning process. ½14 PRRAP  PRRAP
The design binder content of the recycled mix cannot be where PRRAP is specified upper limit on RAP quantity in the
known at this preliminary constituent proportioning stage, recycled mix.
because it can only be finalized through volumetric,
strength, and various performance-based or performance-
Objective function
related tests. Thus, for a known target gradation of
recycled mix, one can only expect that the total binder Let cost of individual constituents, namely RAP, virgin
binder, and virgin aggregates per unit weight (say, per 1000 kg)
demand ðPRb Þ will lie within certain limits. Thus, eq. [2]
be denoted by CRAP, Cvb, and Cva, respectively. The total mate-
can rather be expressed as follows:
rial cost for production of 1000 kg of recycled mix can be writ-
 RAP  ten as ðCRAP  PRRAP Þ þ ðCvb  PRvb Þ þ ðCva  PRva Þ. Since
Pb
½9  PRAP þ ðPRvb Þ  PRb
R
the objective is to minimize total material cost of the
100
recycled mix, the objective function can, therefore, be
and written as

Published by NRC Research Press

 Swamy and Das 1475



5:21
85 PRRAP þð64PRvb Þ
Fig. 6. Blending chart for low temperature from slope of creep From eq. [5], one can have 100

 70,
5:21 R
100 PRAP þðPRvb Þ
curve considerations.
or

½17 ð0:7815  PRRAP Þ  ð6  PRvb Þ  0

5:21
28:3 PRRAP þð22:5PRvb Þ
From eq. [6], one can have 100

 25,
5:21 R
100 PRAP þðPRvb Þ

or
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½18 ð0:1719  PRRAP Þ  ð2:5  PRvb Þ  0

5:21
10 PRRAP þð30PRvb Þ
From eq. [7], one can have 100

 ð18Þ,
5:21PR þðPRvb Þ
100 RAP

or

½19 ð0:4168  PRRAP Þ  ð12  PRvb Þ  0

½15 MinfðCRAP  PRRAP Þ þ ðCvb  PRvb Þ þ ðCva  PRva Þg


5:21
12 PRRAP þð28PRvb Þ
Having developed the above formulation in terms of con- From eq. [8], 100

 ð18Þ, or
5:21 R
100 PRAP þðPRvb Þ
straint equations and objective function, a numerical exam-
ple is presented in the next section. ½20 ð0:3126  PRRAP Þ  ð10  PRvb Þ  0
For personal use only.

Example problem From eq. [9], 5:21 R R
100  PRAP þ ðPvb Þ  5:6, or

This example problem is a hypothetical one. Some pub-
lished literature (Kandhal and Foo 1997; Kennedy et al.
1998a, 1998b) was consulted to adopt a realistic range of
the assumed data.
Problem statement
From binder extraction, binder content in RAP is found to
be 5.21%. The aged and proposed virgin binders are tested,
and various critical temperatures are estimated. These values
are tabulated in Table 1.
The total binder demand of the recycled mix is expected
to lie within 5.0%–5.6%. The material costs per 1000 kg of
RAP, virgin binder, and virgin aggregates are INR 103
(US$2.5), INR 15950 (US$388), and INR 385 (US$9.4), re-
spectively (Central Public Works Department 2002), for the
region considered, where INR indicates Indian Rupees. Con-
sider the design values of higher, intermediate, and lower
temperatures are 708C, 258C, and –188C, respectively. Esti-
mate the constituent proportions of the recycled mix, so that
the total material cost of the recycled mix is minimized, for
the following two cases:
Case 1: With no constraint imposed on RAP quantity
Case 2: With a constraint that the RAP quantity cannot
exceed 35%
Solution


5:21 PR
From eq. [4], one can have
86:5
 100
 þð65Pvb Þ  70.
RAP
PRAP
b P R þðPRvb Þ
100 RAP
Simplifying,
½16 ð0:8597  PRRAP Þ  ð5  PRvb Þ  0
½21 ð0:0521  PRRAP Þ þ ðPRvb Þ  5:6


From eq. [10], 5:21 R R
100  PRAP þ ðPvb Þ  5:0, or
½22 ð0:0521  PRRAP Þ þ ðPRvb Þ  5:0
If the RAP quantity is restricted to 35% (as per Case 2), we
have
½23 PRRAP  35
The objective function can be written as follows:
½24 Minfð103  PRRAP Þ þ ð15950  PRvb Þ þ ð385  PRna Þg
For Case 1 (no restriction on RAP quantity), eqs. [11]–
[13] and eqs. [16]–[22] are used as constraints, and eq. [24]
is used as the objective function. For Case 2 (RAP quantity
being restricted), eq. [23] is used as an additional constraint.
The problem is solved using standard linear programming
(LP) software, and the results obtained are tabulated in Ta-
ble 2. The costs of recycled mix per tonne for Case 1 and
Case 2 are obtained as US$15.82 and US$17.35, respec-
tively.
It would be interesting to compare the proposed approach
with recycled mix design as per Superpave guidelines
(McDaniel and Anderson 2001). To perform calculations,
R some suitable values are assumed. The specific gravities of
asphalt binders (Gb) are assumed as 1.05 and 1.04, respec-
tively, for RAP and virgin binder. The absorbed binder (per-
centage by weight of aggregates, Pba) is assumed as 1.5%.
The maximum theoretical specific gravity (Gmm) of RAP is
assumed as 2.65, and the bulk specific gravity of virgin ag-
gregates (Gsb) is assumed as 2.6.

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 1476
Table 1. Critical temperatures of aged and virgin binders for different criteria.
Criteria
High temperature at which G =sin @ = 1.00 kPa
High temperature at which G =sin @ = 2.20 kPa
Intermediate temperature at which G  sin @ = 5.00 MPa
Low temperature at which stiffness (S) = 300 MPa
Low temperature at which slope (m) = 0.3
Table 2. Suggested optimal constituent proportions.
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Proposed approach Superpave approach
Component Case 1 Case 2 Case 1 Case 2
PRRAP 41.37% 35.00% 43.00% 35.00%
PRvb 2.84% 3.17% 3.13% 3.27%
PRna 55.79% 61.83% 53.87% 61.73%
Cost/t ($) 15.82 17.35 16.72 17.68
Since Superpave approach does not involve cost optimi-
zation, any suitable RAP content may be assumed for Case
1 and different design solutions can be obtained. For Case
2, RAP quantity is kept fixed as 35%. The proportions of
constituents obtained as per Superpave are given in Table 2.
For personal use only.
The cost of recycled mix per tonne for Case 1 and Case 2
are obtained as US$16.72 and US$17.68, respectively, in
the present calculations. These costs turn out to be higher
than the costs calculated as per the proposed formulation.
In the proposed formulation, the basic formulation remains
the same irrespective of whether RAP quantity is fixed or
binder grade is fixed. The LP scheme will always provide
the cost-optimal solution. If there is any change of value of
any parameters, the LP scheme needs to be rerun with the
new set values.
Concluding remarks
The above example explains how an LP scheme can be
employed effectively, so as to estimate the cost-optimal con-
stituent proportions of recycled mix, with and without re-
striction on maximum limit of RAP quantity usage. One
can, as well, add or drop any constraint to or from the for-
mulation; for example, the criterion for direct tension test
can be incorporated in a similar fashion. Also, the formula-
tion can accommodate any other future change or replace-
ment in the Superpave criteria, so long as the corresponding
blending chart follows a linear trend. Thus, the proposed
formulation is quite simple and flexible.
The present work has developed a generalized formula-
tion for preliminary constituent proportioning, for central
plant hot recycled mix following Superpave binder specifi-
cations. The formulation is implemented in a linear pro-
gramming scheme, where the mix designer may choose to
minimize the total material cost while satisfying the require-
ments laid down by Superpave.
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PRb lower limit on total binder in recycled mix
PRRAP percentage of RAP in recycled mix
PRRAP upper limit on RAP in recycled mix
PRva percentage of virgin aggregate in recycled mix
PRvb percentage of virgin binder in recycled mix
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List of symbols Tdes,fatigue design temperature under fatigue consideration
Tdes,slope lower design temperature for slope of recycled as-
CRAP cost of RAP per unit quantity phalt binder under low-temperature cracking con-
Cvb cost of virgin binder per unit quantity sideration
Cva cost of virgin aggregate per unit quantity Tdes,stiffness lower design temperature for creep stiffness of re-
pvb fraction of virgin binder in blended binder cycled asphalt binder under low-temperature crack-
pab fraction of aged binder in blended binder ing consideration
rb Tdes,tend design temperature under tenderness consideration
Tres response temperature of the blended binder
PRb percentage of total binder (aged binder + virgin bin-
der) in the recycled mix
PRb upper limit on total binder in recycled mix

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