Uses and Mixtures

Bitumen Guide
• Road Construction and Maintenance
• Variable Factors
• Hot Mix
• Mixture Specifications
• Road Recycling
• Industrial Usage

Road Construction and Maintenance

For many years well over 80% of world consumption of bitumen, which is estimated at 100
million tonnes, has been used for paving applications, the construction and maintenance of
roads. The rest is used for various purposes. The use of bitumen in road maintenance can be
up to four times its use in road construction.
An understanding of how roads are built is necessary for an appreciation of the importance of
the role played by bitumen. Modern road design and construction techniques are aimed at
building flexible road layers or courses so that the tensile and compressive stresses imposed
by passing traffic are distributed evenly through these layers according to their relative
strengths. Therefore, neither the ground supporting the road nor the individual layers are
permanently deformed by these concentrated stresses.
The courses must also be made weather resistant and durable. Bitumen plays a major part in
meeting this requirement because it strongly binds the aggregate particles and seals and fills
in the voids between them. its effectiveness depends on the aggregate specification, the size
and number of voids and the type of bitumen. By sealing the gaps, bitumen makes it difficult
for water to penetrate the road courses and damage the natural foundation of the road.
In the contact of roadbuilding, the entire road structure is called the pavement.
The lowest layer of a road is the natural soil of the subgrade. For a new road it is carefully
prepared by modern machinery but for an old road this layer consists of whatever has been
left by generations of traffic.
The rest of the road is made up of layers of aggregates and bitumen, each designed to do a
specific job. Aggregates is the term used to describe a mixture of hard non-metallic minerals
such as crushed rock, gravel, sand and slag. Aggregates must meet engineering
specifications as regards shape, strength, surface characteristics and size.
The sub-base is the first layer put down by the roadbuilder and consists of compacted stone,
gravel or sand. Its function is to contribute towards the strength of the road and give the
roadbuilding machinery an operating platform.
The roadbase is the main working layer of the road that gives it strength and flexibility. it is
made up of graded mineral aggregates. When roads have to carry a great deal of traffic, the
roadbase mixture also contains bitumen because the load bearing performance is twice that
of a non-treated granular base.
The base course is a mixture of aggregates and bitumen. It adds to the strength of the road
and is an even surface foundation for the top layer.
The wearing course is the top layer normally consisting of a more finely textured mixture of
aggregate and bitumen. It has not only to act as a smooth running surface for the traffic but
must also be as weather-proof as possible and resist the continual action of the abrasive
forces imposed by the vehicles as they pass along it. The wearing course should also
disperse surface water effectively to minimise the danger of skidding.
Where appropriate, a tack coat of bitumen may be applied between courses to ensure
adhesion of the layers.
The combined depth of the bituminous layers is usually between 20 and 200 millimetres.

Variable factors
The exact make-up of a road will depend on several variable factors such as the weight and
volume of traffic it has been designed to carry, local climatic conditions and the availability of
mineral aggregates. In most cases bitumen will be needed for its properties of waterproofing
and durability and as the cheapest adhesive generally available. A minor secondary road may
use bitumen only for its top two courses, at the rate of 7 tonnes per kilometre. A highway
engineer may call for bitumen to be applied to three courses, with tack coats in between,
because of the mixture's superior load bearing properties. In this case bitumen consumption
can amount to 1000 tonnes per kilometre. The bitumen percentage in an aggregate/bitumen
mixture is usually between 4-8%.
General Road Construction and Maintenance Applications
Paving Cutbacks Emulsions Modified
Grades bitumens
Low High
Example of Use 50 170 320 600
viscosity viscosity
Cutback Manufacture
Emulsion Manufacture
Hot-mix asphalt
Spray Seals
Tack Coat
This table defines some typical road construction and maintenance applications.

Hot Mix

The mixing of aggregates and bitumen to produce asphalt may take place at a purpose-built
plant located away from the road construction site or it may be done at the site itself.
Controlled amounts of aggregates, which have been carefully graded to meet the
specification, are dried and heated before being mixed with a measured quantity of hot
bitumen. All this takes place in a purpose-built plant. The hot mixture, at a temperature of up
to 160°C, is carried to the construction site and laid while still hot.
This describes in simple terms a process in which skill and experience are combined with
computerised control systems to carry out a complex series of operations. Various sizes of
aggregates dry out, gain and retain heat at different rates. Their temperature must be
controlled so that the bitumen does not cool when it is mixed with the aggregates. The supply
of aggregates is continuously weighed by scales linked to the pump metering the supply of
bitumen, so that a constant ratio of aggregate to bitumen is maintained. The mixing time
should be no longer than is necessary for the uniform distribution of the bitumen as a coating
for the aggregate particles, otherwise the bitumen film will harden as it is exposed to air. If the
mixing process takes too long the durability of the mixture will be impaired. To provide
consistent high quality mixtures, continuous operation of the plant is required which in turn
means that all parts of the operation must be integrated so there are no hold-ups as the
drying, screening, mixing, transporting and laying processes are carried out.
Bitumen supplies are ordered daily to meet the production schedules based on the road
gangs' programmes for the following day. As bitumen storage capacity is usually limited,
delivery has to be made on a ‘when required’ basis, often within thirty minutes of a target time
based on the moment when the aggregates have been heated to the right temperature for
mixing with bitumen. Any delay means that expensive fuel is wasted in keeping the aggregate
at the right temperature. This precision in delivery calls for a high degree of commitment on
the part of the supplier in terms of capital equipment, logistics and technical expertise.
With cutbacks and bitumen emulsions, lower aggregate (stone) temperatures (30-100°C) can
be used: mixing may be carried out on site or by using mobile mixing plants. This is one of the
significant advantages of using these bitumens when the design of the road allows them to be
specified.

Mixture Specifications
Asphalts have been classified into a number of different types, which may be simply stated
as:

Asphaltic Concrete: a dense, continuously graded mixture of coarse and

fine aggregates, mineral filler and bitumen produced hot in a mixing plant. It
is delivered, spread and compacted while hot.

Bituminous Macadam: a road with a graded aggregate and bituminous

coating, in which the mechanical interlock of the aggregate particles
contributes significantly to its strength.

Open-graded Asphalt: an asphaltic mix using aggregates containing only

small amounts of fine material and providing a high percentage of air voids.

Stone Mastic Asphalt: a gap-graded wearing course mix with a high

proportion of coarse aggregate content which interlocks to form a stone-on-
stone skeleton to resist permanent deformation. The mix is filled with a
mastic of bitumen and filler.

Tack coat: a thin layer of emulsified or cutback bitumen that bonds a layer of
road to the layer beneath. Current practice is to favour the more modem
bitumen emulsions in place of cutbacks.

Surface treatments: including dressings and coats, involve spraying a

coating of bitumen onto the surface of a wearing course. It can be sprayed as
an emulsion, a cutback or a paving grade bitumen. Either a single or double
coating of fine aggregates or stone chippings is applied. These treatments
are applied to renovate and waterproof old roads that require maintenance.
An example of such a treatment is a fog seal which is a coat of bitumen
emulsion applied to an existing surface to seal cracks as a maintenance
treatment.

Bituminous Slurry Surfacing: an important maintenance treatment for the

surface in which a mixture of fine aggregates and filler and emulsified
bitumen is applied to a structurally sound road surface for minor shape
corrections and to improve skid resistance. It has the advantage that it can be
applied rapidly at a relatively low cost by a truck-mounted mixing plant.

Road Recycling

The techniques of road recycling reclaim the materials used to build roads. They offer benefits
in terms of reduced demands for aggregates and energy. The layers of road surface are
ripped up, crushed and reprocessed with varying proportions of fresh aggregate, new bitumen
or emulsions and, if necessary, a recycling agent. The process may be carried out on site (in
situ), or the reclaimed material can be transported to and from the site to be mixed in a
dedicated, static plant.

Industrial Usage

The use of bitumen in industry accounts for less, than 20% of world bitumen production. It is
nevertheless important to those manufacturers and engineers who rely on its particular
properties as an economical binder and protector. In many parts of the world it is used
extensively to waterproof the roofs of houses, often in the form of shingles which are strips of
felt first impregnated with bitumen and then covered on both sides with harder bitumen and a
coating of mineral granules. A similar construction technique involves sheets of bitumen-
saturated felt laid onto a flat roof with layers of bitumen below, between and above them. In
more complex roofing projects, bitumen is to be found holding in place a protective coating of
chippings on the cantilevered roof of a sports stadium. By contrast, bitumen is also used in
dampproofing and floor composition tiles.
Other materials, particularly felts and papers, are impregnated with bitumen to improve their
performance as regards insulation. Packaging papers, printing inks, linoleum, sound
deadening felts hidden inside car bodies and the undersealing compounds beneath them,
electrical insulating compounds and battery boxes are some of the hundreds of industrial and
domestic products likely to contain bitumen.