Accelerated curing potential of cold mix asphalt using silica fume and hydrated lime as filler

ABSTRACT

The performance of Cold mix asphalt (CMA) is influenced by the curing temperature. This study investigated the strength formation for CMA containing hydrated lime (HL) and silica fume (SF) as filler (0%–100% by weight of filler portion) and treated with 1% cement to compare with Hot mix asphalt (HMA). Moreover, three accelerated curing regimes (38°C, 40°C & 60°C) and ambient temperature (28–32°C) curing for three days are proposed to improve performance of the mixtures. The results have indicated a significant improvement in laboratory parameters in terms of stability and fatigue life for higher temperature (40°C and 60°C) cured mixes. Although the tensile strength of CMA is lower than HMA, despite that it shows improvement up to 68.19% at 60°C. The rutting depth of cement-treated CMA (CMA-CT) containing 50% HL and 50% SF was 58.63% lower than HMA when the samples were cured at 60°C. The accelerated curing enhances the stiffness of CMA mixes up to 344.82%. Overall, the research suggests that the use of 50% SF and 50% HL filler might be appropriate for both the CMA and CMA-CT mixes in terms of effective mixture properties. And the accelerated curing can mitigate the inferior performance issues related to CMA.

KEYWORDS:

• Cold mix asphalt
• cement
• filler
• curing temperature
• stiffness
• fatigue
• rutting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).