Abstract
Engineers are constantly trying to improve the performance of the flexible pavements. The main surface distress types which cause maintenance and disruption are rutting and fatigue cracking. For solving these problems, many studies have been carried out until now, ranged from changing gradation to adding polymers and fibers to asphalt mixture. In this study, polypropylene additive was selected as fiber additive because of low costing and having good correlation with asphalt pavement. Three type of polypropylene additive in the length 6, 12 and 19 mm were selected and used at five different percentages in the asphalt concrete mixture. Asphalt specimens were analysed by Marshall Analysis and finally tested by Marshall Stability apparatus. Adding polypropylene increased Marshall Stability (38%), and decreased Flow (39%). These results show that polypropylene can be helpful for increasing pavement life.
Highlights
Scientists and engineers are constantly improving the performance of the flexible pavements
The aggregate gradation and the percent of asphalt are playing important roles. For solving these problems different efforts have been done like changing gradation to the stone mastic asphalt (SMA) concluded in higher rutting resistance in SMA compare to dense-graded wearing course mixture [1, 2], increasing coarse aggregate fracture faces showed an increase in rutting resistance, National Cooperative Highway Program 9-35 reports [2]
For 0.5% of 19 mm long polypropylene by weight of total mix, in this percent of polypropylene Marshall Stability jumped up to 1248 Kg which improved Stability for about 38%, Flow was 3.4mm which decreased for 39%
Summary
Scientists and engineers are constantly improving the performance of the flexible pavements. As an utilizing additive for example using hydrated lime in many different studies has been performed like research of Burger & Huege which says that use of hydrated lime contributes to high performance asphalt pavement to mitigate moisture susceptibility, improving rut resistance and reducing fatigue cracking or The National Lime Association has confirmed using hydrated lime in asphalt mixture, make the pavement more resistant to rutting and fatigue cracking [11] These distresses are common in many countries because of improper mix design and traffic loading and there are few investigations in this area to improve roads performance. Repeated load creep tests under different loading patterns have shown that the time to failure of fiber-modified asphalt specimens under repeated creep loading at different loading patterns increased by 5–12 times versus reference specimens, a very significant improvement [19]
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