Improvement in bituminous surface course using waste plastic in acid-rain susceptible area’s

Abstract

Acid rain as an important environmental issue has negative impact on bitumen performance, thereby shortening the service life of bituminous pavements. Rapid industrial and economic developments causes negative changes in the environment, including acid rain. Acid rain consisting of sulphuric acid and nitric acid has adverse effects on bituminous pavements. Both these acids react with the bitumen and adversely effect’s the properties of the bitumen leading to degradation of pavements at early stage of life. Early degradation of such pavements can be reduced to some extent by using waste plastic in bituminous surface course. Besides acid rain puts an adverse effect on the properties of bitumen, it also percolates deep down in the various down layers of pavements and reduces the serviceability of our pavements & its foundation. Waste plastic such as PET water bottles cannot only prevents the early degradation of pavements but also can prevents entry of acid rain into deep down layers of pavement as it absorbs acid rain water which makes it hydroscopic as because of it acid rain water does not percolate deep down into below pavement layers. In this paper, interaction between constituents of acid rain and bitumen is being investigated by analyzing the effect of sulphuric acid and nitric acid on control mix (mix without plastic content) & 6% WPET mix (mix with 6% waste plastic PET content) by using Marshal stability test. Also, it’s evaluated how improvement in bituminous surface course can be done by using waste plastic on acid rain area’s so that our pavements show good safety & serviceability.