Suitable Granular Road Base from Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement Guerrero Bustamante, Oswaldo Guillén, Amparo Moreno Navarro, Fernando Manuel Rubio Gámez, María Del Carmen Del Sol Sánchez, Miguel Granular base Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) Sustainable materials Road infrastructure The present study has been conducted within the framework of two research projects: one project in collaboration with the company GUAMAR S.A., entitled “Viability of using RAP as granular base in linear constructions”; and another project with acronym “ECO-WAVE” and titled “Development of Sustainable and anti-vibration sub-ballast for railway” (PID2022-142915OB-IOO), funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and University of Spain (MICIU/AEI/10.13039/ 501100011033) and by the European Union (FEDER). The granular bases commonly used in the construction of road infrastructure projects often require a high consumption of raw materials. The potential utilization of recycled materials, specifically Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) derived from road asphalt pavement demolition, emerges as a promising sustainable advantage for infrastructure projects, considering its potential environmental and cost benefits in other layers of the structure. In this context, this research proposes a feasibility study on the use of RAP as a granular base layer, supported by an advanced laboratory analysis that includes a range of tests simulating the in-service conditions as well as a full-scale demonstration of the material behavior under static and dynamic loads. Various design variables, such as different gradations and binder content, are considered. The results demonstrate that, despite having discontinuous gradation and smaller aggregate sizes than those commonly applied in natural base layers, the evaluated recycled materials exhibit a higher load-bearing capacity and resistance to permanent deformation than the reference materials commonly used as granular bases. Notable enhancements of up to 30% in elastic modulus, coupled with reductions of around 20% in permanent deformations, have been documented using the asphalt cement potential in the old pavement. 2025-03-10T10:20:34Z 2025-03-10T10:20:34Z 2025-02-15 journal article Guerrero-Bustamante, O.; Guillen, A.; Moreno-Navarro, F.; Rubio-Gámez, M.C.; Sol-Sánchez, M. Suitable Granular Road Base from Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement. Materials 2025, 18, 854. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma18040854 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/102959 10.3390/ma18040854 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional MDPI