The Comparison of the Bleeding Potential of Chip Seals Developed with Recycled Materials and Limestone Aggregates

Waste glass accounts for huge quantities throughout the world. Although some part of this waste material is recycled, a considerable part of waste glass cannot be reused and recycled due to the glass remanufacturing strict limitations. Hence, reusing waste glass in construction projects can be a cost-effective and environmentally friendly method to recycle this material. One of the preventive or corrective pavement maintenance approaches is chip sealing which can be constructed easily and rapidly on old pavements. In this study, the conventional limestone aggregates were replaced with 100% waste glass to develop a new chip seal. A cationic rapid-setting bitumen emulsion was also utilized to develop the chip seal. Different experimental methods were used to compare the performance of the new chip seal and the limestone chip seal, including the sand patch test and an adjusted load wheel test (LWT) for bleeding resistance. The test result revealed that the macrostructure of this waste material was in the standard range of chip seals, providing sufficient mean texture depth (MTD) for posted traffic speed over 70 km/h. Besides, the bleeding potential of glass chip seal was approximately two times higher than limestone aggregates due to lower Los Angeles abrasion resistance. Overall, as the abrasion resistance of glass aggregates is not as high as limestone aggregates, it is recommended to use them for the chip sealing of bicycle paths, low-volume roads, driveways, and parking lots. Finally, reusing these materials as chip seal aggregates can recycle high quantities of these materials and reduce the demand for natural aggregates.