Study on road performances of asphalt mixtures with granulated polymer anti-rutting additive

ABSTRACT

Rutting has been one of the primary concerns for highway engineers in China. Granulated polymer anti-rutting additive may be an effective way to solve this problem. However, it is difficult to find previous research on the application of granulated polymer as an anti-rutting additive in different types of asphalt mixtures. This research aims to investigate the influences of the anti-rutting additive contents on road performances based on different types of asphalt mixtures, and also explores potential reasons for road performance improvement. Three types of asphalt mixtures: dense-graded asphalt concrete (DG-AC), dense-graded Superpave (DG-Superpave)，semi-open-graded asphalt macadam (SOG-AM), were included. Road performances, including high-temperature performance, low-temperature performance and moisture susceptibility, were studied at three anti-rutting additive percentages: 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4% weight of the asphalt mixture. The mixtures without the anti-rutting additive were regarded as control groups. In order to better analyse the road performance improvements, the properties of modified asphalt with 0.4% anti-rutting additive were studied, as well as the anti-rutting additive physical form in the asphalt mixture. It was found that the anti-rutting additive improved mixture’s high-temperature performance significantly while its effects on low-temperature performance were not so. It reduced low-temperature tensile strain within 12.9% range. Moisture susceptibility was improved greatly after adding 0.2% anti-rutting additive as compared to the corresponding control groups. By increasing the additive contents to 0.3 and 0.4%, the moisture susceptibility had no significant difference compared with that of the 0.2% additive content group. Road performance improvements may relate to the combined action of reinforcement and gap filling by the elongated anti-rutting additive, as well as asphalt modification within short time. When the additive content is no more than 0.3%, the materials costs of the additive-modified asphalt mixtures are less than that of SBS-modified asphalt mixtures.

KEYWORDS:

• Granulated polymer
• anti-rutting additive
• asphalt mixture
• road performance
• structure type
• physical form

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported from the Traffic Construction Project of Science and Technology of Shaanxi Province [grant number 03-23k]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 51578076].