Evaluation of the cooling effect and anti-rutting performance of thermally resistant and heat-reflective pavement

ABSTRACT

To reduce asphalt pavement temperature and improve its anti-rutting performance in summer, thermally resistant friction course (referred to as TRFC-13), heat-reflective coating (referred to as HRC) and thermally resistant and heat-reflective coating integrated pavement (referred to as TR-HRC) were developed, and their cooling effect, anti-rutting performance and durability were evaluated. In addition, machine-made sands were applied to improve the anti-skid performance of the coating. The results show that compared with ordinary SMA-13 samples, the surface temperature of the TRFC-13, HRC and TR-HRC samples decreased by approximately 6.8°C, 11.2°C and 13.2°C, respectively. At the air temperature of approximately 40°C, the field road surface temperature of the TRFC-13, HRC and TR-HRC decreased by approximately 7.4°C, 12.2°C and 14.0°C, respectively. The higher the air temperature is, the better the anti-rutting performances of these three kinds of pavement. At the air temperature of 39°C, the dynamic stability of the TRFC-13, HRC and TR-HRC is 1.56 times, 1.86 times and 1.88 times that of the ordinary SMA-13, respectively. The results also show that HRC has a strong abrasion resistance and that spreading 40 wt% of machine-made sands can ensure the coatings achieve the best British Pendulum Number, without influencing its cooling performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Road engineering
• thermally resistant pavement
• heat-reflective coating
• integrated pavement
• dynamic stability
• durability

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge their financial support. And special thanks also go to Key Laboratory for Special Area Highway Engineering of Ministry of Education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the Science and Technology Project of Zhejiang Provincial Department of Transportation (Nos. 2014H60, 2015J23, and 2016020), the National Natural Science Foundation of China under project No. 51408044, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under project No. 2015T80999, and the Scientific Research of Central Colleges of China for  Chang'an University under project No. 300102218205.