Use of Waste Plastic in Wearing Course of Flexible Pavement

Abstract

This paper brings to light the use of waste plastic in the construction of roads. The waste plastic generation is increasing significantly on a daily basis. Through this review, we intend to find the efficient and feasible ways to reutilize the waste particles in hard-plastic waste as a bitumen modifier primarily for flexible pavements like bitumen and bituminous concrete roads. The use of waste plastic in recycled form in the pavement asphalt can serve as a valuable outlet for such type of waste materials. By using the concrete having modified bitumen mix along with processed waste plastic of about 5–10% by wt. of bitumen leads to a substantial improvement in the fatigue life, strength and other properties desirable in bituminous concrete. Consequently, it improves the service life and pavement performance with a marginal but significant saving in usage of bitumen in road construction. This process is certainly environment-friendly. Using waste plastics in the construction of pavements helps to consume large quantity of plastics which are hazardous waste. Thus, these processes also have high social and ecological relevance and contribute toward sustainable development. There are two processes to mix the plastic in surface layer of the road wet process and dry process. We are using wet mix process for the bitumen mix design by adding plastic waste and compare the results with the standard bitumen mix. We have chosen Marshall mix design for the calculation of grading and optimum bitumen and plastic content in mix. We are mainly focusing on surface layer of wearing course of about 50 mm thick, i.e., surface layer of road. This could be helpful in managing waste plastic while improving road quality and making them economical too.