Laboratory investigation of the influence of warm asphalt additives on long-term performance properties of CRM binders

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental analysis of the long-term properties of rubberised binders containing warm asphalt additives. The rubberised binders were manufactured at 10% by binder weight using five different binder sources and the binders with the additives were produced using two (i.e. Aspha-min® and Sasobit®) of the available warm asphalt processes. The rubberised warm asphalt binders were artificially short-term and then long-term aged through the rolling thin film oven and pressure ageing vessel procedures. Superpave binder tests were carried out on the binders using the rotational viscometer, the dynamic shear rheometer (DSR) and the bending beam rheometer (BBR). In general, the results of this limited study indicated that (1) the addition of the warm asphalt additives into the rubberised binders showed positive effects on increasing rutting resistance, (2) the rubberised binders containing the additives were less resistant to fatigue cracking at intermediate temperatures than the control rubberised binders (based on the G *sin δ values at 25°C from the DSR test) and (3) the addition of Sasobit® represented a possible lower resistance to low-temperature cracking (based on the stiffness and the m-value at − 12°C from the BBR test) and the addition of Aspha-min® had a statistically insignificant effect on low-temperature properties of rubberised binders.