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Old 9th Apr 2013, 03:58
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OverRun
Prof. Airport Engineer
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
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Old Akro,

I reckon it would work for the apron as well as the hangar floor. It might eventually need to be surfaced with a bitumen seal on the apron if there are problems with erosion, loose stones and propwash, but I would be tempted to try it first and see.

Reconstituted asphalt is old asphalt which has been milled up by a road builder/council. Asphalt is a mixture of 95% graded stone and 5% bitumen. The 'recycled asphalt pavement' or "RAP" ends up looking like a dirty crushed rock with some large sized stones (20-40mm) in it. It's normally hauled back to the asphalt plant or council depot for future recycling, and if you can get it delivered cheaply, it can be better than gravel.

Cheers, OverRun

When used as an apron, carpark or footpath, it packs down pretty easily and acts like a crushed rock. But over time the old bitumen in the recycled asphalt sort of re-activates a bit and starts to re-bind the graded stone. Hot weather softens the old bitumen which helps. Fuel and oil spills aren't really much of a problem because they help to re-activate the bitumen as well. After a year or two, it can set pretty hard and does not erode easily, and usually goes a gray colour. It will never be concrete, but it is a lot better than dirt and better than gravel. I have seen a lot of it used to build carparks and backstreets when funds are tight.

There is a variant which is not common, and that is to mix through 1.5-2% bitumen emulsion (maybe diluted with water a bit as well) before compaction, and then you get poor man's asphalt from the very start. Adrian Bergh was one of the grandfathers of this type of thing, and he used to come back after the initial rolling, loosen the top 25mm and then mix an extra 1% bitumen emulsion into that top 25mm (also diluted with water a bit as well) and recompact, and then you REALLY get the poor man's asphalt which should also be erosion proof. Pretty messy work though.

Because RAP is 95% stone, it is inherently strong, and if you eventually have to put a bitumen sealed surface on top because of erosion problems, the RAP is already a great basecourse and you can simply bitumen seal on top. I would make sure that you have 100mm depth of the RAP before you put the bitumen seal on though, because once you have bitumen sealed it then you can't later reshape or regrade any ruts or roughness.

Incidentally that is why gravel roads and runways can have thin pavements – they only need have a life of a few months or maybe a year or two, and they can rut and corrugate and get rough, and then the grader comes back to reshape them. If I get my driveway built with a nice asphalt surface, I want it to last 20 years in perfect condition without being touched, and so then I need a thicker pavement.
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