Experimental study on rutting performance by using polypropylene fiber

Abstract

Abstract: Transportation engineering play a vital role in the developing of a society and a country. It’s actually deal with the planning, designing, operating and managing different types of facilities for all modes of transportation to provide safe, convenient, comfortable, efficient and economical movement of people as well as goods. Due to the climatic variations and growth of traffic loading, road infrastructure faces number of serious failures such as rutting, stripping, fatigue cracking, bleeding etc. Maintenance of roads is necessary because roads lose its serviceability with passage of time. A lot of researches have been done to improve the quality of hot mix asphalt and to overcome problems associated with HMA. In current research polypropylene fibers were used as additive in asphalt concrete at different percentages i.e., 1%, 2%, 3% by weight of total mix. The main target of this study was to check the effect of polypropylene fibers on the rutting performance of HMA and also to check the response of fibers modified samples against moisture damage. For mixing of fibers with Hot Mix Asphalt “wet method” of mixing was adopted. For determination of OBC Marshall Mix Design was followed. Same OBC was used for control and fibers modified samples. Wheel tracker test and indirect tensile test were carried out for determination of rutting and moisture susceptibility of different mixes respectively. On the basis of rutting test result, it was revealed that adding 1% polypropylene fibers enhanced the ability of hot mix asphalt to resist rutting up to 14%, while for 2% and 3% fibers decrease in rutting resistance was noted which was 18% and 78% respectively. From the results of indirect tensile strength, it was observed that resistance to moisture damage is increases by increasing the quantity of fibers because it has maximum elongation and modulus as compared to bitumen. Keywords: Polypropylene Fibers, Wheel Tracker test, Indirect Tensile Test, Marshall Mix