Long-life flexible pavements are well documented and used widely across the U.S. Found in every climate zone and traffic classification, long-life pavements do not experience deep structural distresses such as bottom-up fatigue cracking or substructure rutting. Full-scale test sections, built in 2003 at the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) Test Track, provided the basis for an optimized design approach that utilizes strain distributions for long-life thickness design. These sections, containing only virgin materials, were subjected to 30 million standard axle loadings with excellent performance in terms of rutting, cracking, and roughness. In 2012, three new sections were built at the Test Track using cold central plant recycled asphalt materials as the base layer. These layers, made from nearly 100% reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), supported hot mix asphalt layers that also included RAP with one section featuring in-place stabilization of the existing aggregate base. This paper provides a direct comparison between the sets of sections to compare and contrast their performance histories and structural characterization, and consider their economic and environmental impacts. None of the recycled sections are exhibiting any surface deterioration, despite heavy trafficking, and the section with a stabilized base is exhibiting lower strains than established long-life pavement thresholds. The economic analysis suggested that the recycled sections can deliver similar performance at a lower average structure normalized section cost than the non-recycled sections. Furthermore, the section with the stabilized base and 76% recycled material is likely a long-life pavement and can potentially outperform the sections with no recycled content.

长寿命柔性路面在美国有充分的记录并被广泛使用 在每个气候区和交通分类中都有发现，长寿命路面不会经历深层结构性损坏，例如自下而上的疲劳开裂或下部结构车辙。2003 年在国家沥青技术中心 (NCAT) 测试轨道建造的全尺寸测试段为优化设计方法提供了基础，该方法利用应变分布进行长寿命厚度设计。这些仅包含原始材料的截面承受了 3000 万个标准轴载，在车辙、开裂和粗糙度方面具有出色的性能。2012 年，在试验轨道上新建了三个路段，使用冷的中央工厂再生沥青材料作为基层。这些层由近 100% 的再生沥青路面 (RAP) 制成，支持热拌沥青层，其中还包括 RAP，其中一个部分具有现有骨料基础的就地稳定功能。本文提供了一组截面之间的直接比较，以比较和对比它们的性能历史和结构特征，并考虑它们的经济和环境影响。尽管运输量很大，但所有回收路段都没有表现出任何表面劣化，并且具有稳定基础的路段表现出的应变低于既定的长寿命路面阈值。经济分析表明，与非回收部分相比，回收部分可以以较低的平均结构标准化部分成本提供相似的性能。此外，