To reduce thermal susceptibility and improve rutting and fatigue cracking resistance,
increasingly more non-conventional additives and materials have been used in road pavement asphalt
mixes in recent years. Non-conventional materials mainly include recycled materials, which reduce
production costs and lead to environmental benefits related to their reuse. The aim of this research
was to evaluate the influence of recycled tyre rubber in the production of asphalt concrete for road
pavements built with recycled aggregates consisting of steel slag in relation to possible improvements
in structural performance during operation (i.e., fatigue and rutting). Steel slag has a higher bulk
specific gravity than natural aggregates, and it has a very porous surface that allows for a dierent
interaction with the bitumen and the crumb rubber compared to traditional aggregates. To this end,
two mixtures of asphalt concrete are compared. One was mixed with a modest percentage by weight of
crumb rubber using the “dry” technique, and the other mixture did not contain crumb rubber. Indirect
tensile and compression tests with cyclic loads were performed to determine the mechanical behaviour
of the two mixtures at dierent temperatures and under dierent load frequencies. The results of this
research indicate the better performance of the modified mixture with crumb rubber, which agrees
with other experiments in the literature that have been made using natural aggregates. Furthermore,
a significant increase in stiness was found at high temperatures (up to 30%), a slight reduction
(up to 8%) was found at low temperatures, and a reduction in permanent deformation was found
under cyclic loads.
