Electro-thermal evaluation of electrically conductive asphalt pavement containing recycled metal fiber

Fast deicing of pavements is essential for several reasons: ensuring safety on the airfields, bridge decks, and highways, and enabling accessibility to winter resorts. These pavements include conductive materials to create a continuous network of electricity throughout the pavement. This study introduces the use of high-carbon recycled metal fiber (RMF) and carbon black modified binder (CBMB) to design an electrically conductive asphalt pavement (ECAP) with the capability of ice and snow melting. For this purpose, four ECAP samples with varying percentages of RMF and two types of binders, namely virgin PG 58 -22 and CBMB, were constructed and tested at the full-scale pavement testing site of Urmia University in northwest Iran. Subsequently, twelve cores were taken from the field samples, and laboratory experiments were conducted on them. Results show that the best electro-thermal performance was observed in the field sample containing 6% RMF with CBMB. The consumed energy calculated for heating the cores was lower than in recent studies; 1623 W/m² was estimated to raise the ECAP temperature from -20 to 0 °C in just 128 s, based on the cores' electro-thermal experiments. The ECAP's electro-thermal performance exhibited promising results for protecting pavements during extreme snow events.