Since more than ten years, the focuses on environmental aspects have lead to a need to adapt technical solutions for road applications regarding the sustainable development. In France, to answer to these preoccupations, the Enrobés à Module Elevé (EME - High Modulus Asphalt mixes, in english) give, since more than 20 years, an excellent solution to reduce the use of materials while maintaining a very long service life road structure. Similarly, the hot recycled asphalt mixes with high rate of RA (up to 50%) had shown a good efficiency to improve the environmental aspect, while showing a good mechanical behaviour. This article presents the main characteristics of a job site which combine these two techniques, namely an EME with 50 and 65% of RA content. The main keys of success are developed, in terms of homogeneity of RA (wearing course on motorway), preliminary laboratory mix design, new mixing plant with two separate drums, where one is specially dedicated to the re-heating of RA and quality control. This paper describes the asphalt mix performance of the different asphalt mixes, like complex modulus, fatigue and rutting resistances, (preliminary study, mix from the plant or obtained in laboratory). This study is well completed by some researches on the properties of the binders (original binder from RA, new added hard bitumen 10/20, recovered binder from recycled mix). Not only the conventional characteristics, but also the rheological and structural performances (infrared spectroscopy, Size Exclusion Chromatography, IATROSCAN, asphaltenes content) are described.
