ABSTRACT
In this research, a mixture of three agriculture waste fibres, for the first time, was used as biomodifier after alkali treatment, for enhancing the performance of asphalt binder as 3, 5, 7, and 10 wt%. The physical properties of the novel biomodified binder including penetration, softening point and penetration index were studied. The viscoelastic behavior was investigated by studying flow properties at different shear rates using rotational viscometer. Also, the mechanical characteristics of biomodified asphalt binder were studied using DMA through a series of three types of sweep tests conducted on virgin and biomodified asphalt samples to study the effects of time, temperature and frequency on binder performance. It is observed that the biomodified asphalt binder exhibits the same thixotropic hardening over time with high grade temperature and high rutting resistance. Fatigue parameter (loss modulus) obtained from DMA data was employed to estimate the fatigue resistance of biomodified binder. The results declared that loss modulus of samples were decreased, which proved that the fatigue property was enhanced with biomodifier addition. The biomodifier supports asphalt binder with better properties, and can be applied as a partial replacement for the non-renewable asphalt binders used in the construction of road infrastructure.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge Prof. Usama F. Kandil, the director of Polymer Nanocomposites Center, EPRI, Egypt, and the P.I. of the project (STDF-CSE) Program (ID-5213) for the instrumentation and support.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Hamdy M. Naguib http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7741-0305