Quantifying the environmental impacts of crack sealing and filling treatment in hot mix asphalt pavement

Abstract

Crack sealing and filling treatments have always been an important consideration in order to prolong the life of pavement among all the pavement maintenance programs. Crack sealing uses a router to cut the crack to provide a uniform rectangular reservoir for greater penetration of sealants in order to have good bonding whereas crack filling is simply inserting sealant without performing any modification to the crack walls. This research study is intended to compare the initial and long-term environmental burdens between crack sealing and filling treatment. The parameters related to the field implementation of crack treatment methods (length sealed per day, amount of materials, configuration techniques, and equipment data) were collected from the Abilene district database system and the inventory loadings were gathered from the industry and the literature. Each life cycle phase of crack filling and sealing treatment was quantified in eight impact categories in terms of environmental emissions. In general the results of this study indicated that the initial environmental emissions of crack sealing treatment are very high compared to filling technique. However, this environmental burdens can be compensated along with an approximately 25% reduction in emissions by implementing crack sealing treatment over a long period.