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Use of A Warm Mix Asphalt Additive To Reduce The Production Temperatures
Use of A Warm Mix Asphalt Additive To Reduce The Production Temperatures
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Asphalt rubber mixtures are often described as environmentally friendly mixtures due to the incorpo-
Received 17 April 2012 ration of recycled rubber from used tires and due to their improved service life. In fact, their fatigue
Received in revised form cracking and rut resistance properties are better than those of conventional asphalt concrete mixtures.
11 September 2012
However, asphalt rubber mixtures demand higher production temperatures than conventional mixtures
Accepted 16 September 2012
Available online 11 October 2012
due to the higher viscosity of the asphalt rubber binder. The objective of this paper is to assess the
efficiency of using a surfactant based additive in the production of warm mix asphalts, by lowering the
mixing temperatures of asphalt rubber and asphalt concrete mixtures without changing their perfor-
Keywords:
Asphalt rubber
mance. Several laboratory tests were carried out on asphalt rubber and asphalt concrete mixtures, with
Warm mix asphalt and without the additive, in order to evaluate and compare the performance of the mixtures. It was
Temperature reduction concluded that the incorporation of small amounts of a surfactant based additive allowed reducing the
Asphalt performance production temperatures of both types of mixture by 30 C without compromising their performance,
Working conditions and this can be seen as a great step forward towards the production of cleaner asphalt rubber mixtures.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Brito, 2012). Several other studies have been carried out
regarding the assessment of the performance of asphalt mixtures
According to Singh et al. (2009), worldwide generation of waste with incorporation of crumb rubber obtained from recycled tires in
tires amounts to 5 Mt/y, representing 2% of total annual solid waste, the lab (Fontes et al., 2010; Pasquini et al., 2011) or in the field
and their disposal has proved to be extremely difficult due to their (Chui-Te, 2008), either using the wet process (Fontes et al., 2010;
highly resistant chemical, biological and physical properties. The Pasquini et al., 2011) or the dry process (Moreno et al., 2012, 2011;
United States (US) discarded around 290 million tires in 2003, and Weidong, 2007). Other studies were performed to evaluate the use
in the same year the European Union (EU) generated approximately of crumb rubber in reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) mixtures
260 million waste tires. (Xiao et al., 2009a) or to assess the acoustic performance of asphalt
Waste management is critical problem for a sustainable devel- rubber (AR) mixtures (Paje et al., 2010).
opment. In fact, this subject interconnects several areas, not only The addition of crumb rubber to virgin bitumen (Peralta et al.,
the environment, but also the economy, the security and other 2010) produces binders with improved resistance to rutting
social issues (Hamzah et al., 2010). The need to create more (Fontes et al., 2010), fatigue cracking, and thermal cracking while
sustainable technologies in the construction industry has lead to allowing a reduction on the thickness of asphalt overlays and
the incorporation of waste tires in the production of both concrete reflective cracking potential (Thodesen et al., 2009; Lee et al., 2008),
and asphalt mixtures. Some examples of the use of ground tire possibly with the use of specific additives (Miriam, 2009). However,
rubber in cementitious materials can be found in the literature in the production temperatures of the resulting AR mixtures are
order to reduce the structural weight (Pelisser et al., 2012) and/or usually very high (Akisetty et al., 2009). Thus, this type of mixture is
evaluate their durability (Richardson et al., 2012; Bravo and de a potentially successful application of the warm mix asphalt
(WMA) technology, as has recently been object of study (Akisetty
et al., 2009, 2011; Xiao et al., 2009b).
In fact, in order to reduce the production temperature and,
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ351 253 510200; fax: þ351 253 510217.
E-mail addresses: joliveira@civil.uminho.pt (J.R.M. Oliveira), hugo@
consequently, the energy consumption in the manufacture of
civil.uminho.pt (H.M.R.D. Silva), a51302@alunos.uminho.pt (L.P.F. Abreu), a54268@ asphalt mixtures, a new concept was developed and has been
alunos.uminho.pt (S.R.M. Fernandes). tested and implemented in the last few years. This is the WMA
0959-6526/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2012.09.047
16 J.R.M. Oliveira et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 41 (2013) 15e22
2.1. Materials
Fig. 5. Dynamic viscosity of the binders used in hot and warm AC and AR mixtures. Fig. 7. Compactability test results of the AR mixture at different temperatures.
a value of air voids content similar to that of the equivalent HMA, in the 10,000th cycles, and the Mean Proportional Rut Depth in air
order to optimize the efficiency of the additive. (PRDAIR), according to the thickness of the specimen. Based on the
summer climatic conditions of the region, a 50 C temperature was
2.2.3. Methods used to evaluate the performance of the mixtures selected for the test, as being representative of the hot summer
Water sensitivity of asphalt mixtures is a property directly days that would influence more the resistance to permanent
related to the performance and durability of these materials during deformation of the mixtures.
the road pavement life. Therefore, is it important to assess whether The stiffness modulus of bituminous mixtures is one of the most
the additive used would compromise the performance of the important properties for the design of flexible pavements. In the
mixtures. The evaluation of this property is determined in Europe present work this property was assessed using prismatic speci-
by the EN 12697-12 standard, according to which, two groups of mens, with the four-point bending test configuration (4PB-PR),
three specimens are tested for the indirect tensile strength (ITS) according to the EN 12697-26 standard. The test was carried out for
after a different conditioning period (one group is kept dry and the a range of frequencies (0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 8 and 10 Hz), in order to
other is immersed in water). With this test, it is possible to evaluate cover a wide variety of loading conditions, for the temperature of
the effect of the water on the weakening of the bond between 20 C.
aggregates and binder and, consequently, on the strength of the Finally, the fatigue resistance of all studied mixtures was also
mixture, by calculating the average ITS value of each group and the determined using the four-point bending test procedure, according
indirect tensile strength ratio (ITSR), which corresponds to the ratio to the EN 12697-24 standard. The tests were carried out in strain
between the ITS of the wet group (ITSw) and the dry group (ITSd) of control mode, at 20 C and using a frequency of 10 Hz. For these test
specimens. In the present study, the specimens were cored from conditions, the failure criterion is the number of cycles corre-
a slab compacted in the roller compactor (EN 12697-33) and then sponding to a reduction of the stiffness modulus to half of its initial
the indirect tensile test was carried out according to the EN 12697- value.
23 standard, after a volumetric characterization of the specimens
(to determine the voids content, in order to assure that they are 3. Results and discussion
identical and typically around 4%).
The rutting resistance of both types of mixture was then 3.1. Selection of additive content
assessed by means of the Wheel Tracking Test (WTT), according to
the EN 12697-22 standard, using the small device and the proce- The additive content used in each studied mixture was selected
dure B (in air). Therefore, two slabs were prepared for each mixture according to the results of penetration and softening point obtained
(with the dimensions of 30 30 4 cm3), and tested up to 10,000 from samples of the original AC and AR binders and from samples
cycles. The main parameters obtained from this test are the Wheel prepared with the incorporation of different percentages of addi-
Tracking Slope in air (WTSAIR), calculated between the 5000th and tive (between 0.1 and 0.5%). The results of such tests are presented
in Figs. 3 and 4.
Fig. 8. Compactability test results of the AC and AR mixtures for the selected
Fig. 6. Compactability test results of the AC mixture at different temperatures. temperatures.
J.R.M. Oliveira et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 41 (2013) 15e22 19
Fig. 11. Example of the effect of the WMA additive on the WTT final rut deformation obtained for the AR mixtures, at 50 C: a) WTT in operation; b) AR-HMA specimen; c) AR-WMA
specimen.
20 J.R.M. Oliveira et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 41 (2013) 15e22
Fig. 12. Main results of the wheel tracking tests carried out on both types of mixture.
Fig. 14. Phase angle of the studied mixtures obtained at 20 C for different frequencies.
Fig. 13. Stiffness modulus of the studied mixtures obtained at 20 C for different Fig. 15. Fatigue performance of AC and AR mixtures at 20 C (WMA vs. conventional
frequencies. HMA).
J.R.M. Oliveira et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 41 (2013) 15e22 21
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