RESEARCH PROPOSAL

A LABORATORY INVESTIGATION ON STONE MATRIX

ASPHALT USING NATURAL BAMBOO FIBER AS AN
ADDITIVE
Problem Statement
 In recent years, with a formidable rise in traffic volume and heavy vehicle traffic
loading, asphalt pavements suffer from significant challenges like rutting and
increased maintenance expenditure, resulting in a reduction in pavement service life.
[9]

 For a durable wearing course in flexible pavements (Traffic level >50 MSA), Stone
Matrix Asphalt (SMA) mixtures are widely used.[2]

 But the main problem of the stone matrix asphalt (SMA) mixture is binder drain down
during mixing, transport, and compaction.[5]

 Drain down happens when a portion of the mixture fines and bitumen separates itself
from the sample as a whole and flows downward through the mixture.

 To avoid this, binder modification (addition of natural fibers) helps mitigate the
rutting/ cracking and improves the pavement service life.[8]

Research Gap
 Stabilizing additive must be used to hold the binder in SMA mixture at high
temperature during - Mixing, Transportation, and Placement operations.[9]

 Natural fibers such as sisal, jute, lignin, banana, and coir fibers are commonly used to
prevent unacceptable drain down.[8]

 The said fibers are less expensive and eco-friendly alternatives to synthetic fibers and
can be efficiently used to stabilize and reinforce additives in asphalt mixture.[3]

 The bamboo fiber being a new member in the natural fiber list, I want to utilize the
same towards sustainable asphalt mixture in my study. [8]

Why Bamboo Fiber ?

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  India is at 2nd in bamboo diversity after China, with around 13.96 million hectares
under bamboo. [7]

 Bamboo can be utilized as building components such as pole, beam, wall, ceiling,
roofing, doors, bottles, biofuel, musical industry, textile industry, bamboo-craft
products. [7]

 But formation/manufacturing of the above-said products doesn’t utilize the entire

stem section resulting in solid waste.

 Bamboo fiber, which is cellulose fiber ( 43%) extracted from the naturally available
bamboo stem, is a new natural fiber member. It has high tensile strength in the fiber
direction, and it is durable in nature with low manufacture cost. [5]

 Limited studies were found on using bamboo fiber as road materials in the asphalt
mix.

Research Objective
 To determine the optimum bitumen content (OBC) and optimum fiber content (OFC)
using the Marshall mix design method.
 To evaluate the effect of bamboo fiber on mixture rutting and low-temperature
cracking performance.
 To determine the applicability of bamboo fiber by comparing with the mixtures
containing no fiber and commonly used coir and banana fiber.
 To carry out and compare the economic aspect of bamboo fiber with conventional
fibers.

Proposed Methodology
 To design the SMA mix following the Marshall method for OBC and OFC.
 To conduct a Drain down test and Indirect Tensile strength test.
 To carry out the wheel tracking test to determine the effect of bamboo fiber on
mixture rutting and low-temperature cracking performance.
 To compare the mixtures with no-fiber, banana, and coir as controls and their testing
results with those obtained from mixtures with bamboo fiber.

Expected Outcomes

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  The addition of bamboo fiber in SMA may result in overcoming rutting, drain-down,
and low-temperature cracking.
 The study will help find the applicability of bamboo fiber by comparing it with the
mixtures containing commonly used coir and banana fiber.

References
1. Asphalt Institute, Mix design methods for asphalt concrete and other hot-mix types,
manual series No. 2 (MS-2) 7th ed, 2014.
2. IRC:37 (2018). “Guidelines for the design of flexible pavements.” Indian Roads
Congress, New Delhi, India.
3. Kumar, N.L.N. A., Ravitheja, A. (2019). “Characteristics of Stone Matrix Asphalt by
Using Natural Fiber as Additives.” Materials Today : Proceedings., 19 (2), 397-402.
4. Martin, T.C. (2002). “Estimating heavy vehicle road wear costs for bituminous-
surfaced arterial roads.” J. Transp. Eng., 128(2), 103-110.
5. Masri, K.A., Fatin, N.Y.N., Chin, S.C., et al., (2021). “Utilization of Bamboo Fiber
towards sustainable asphalt mixture.” Int. Conf. of Sustainable Earth Resources Eng.
2020, IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science., 641 012002.
6. MORTH (Ministry of Road Transport and Highways). (2013). “Specifications or road
and bridge works.” Indian Roads Congress, New Delhi, India.
7. NBM (National Bamboo Mission). (2019). “Operational Guidelines for National
Bamboo Mission.”
8. Sheng, P., Zhang, B., et al., (2019). “Laboratory Investigation on the Use of Bamboo
Fiber in Asphalt Mixtures for Enhanced Performance.” Arabian J. for Sci. and Eng.,
44, 4629-4638.
9. Vale, A.C. D., Casagrande, M.D.T., and Soares, J.B.S., (2014). “Behavior of Natural
Fiber in Stone Matrix Asphalt Mixtures Using Two Design Methods.” J. Mater. Civ.
Eng., 26 (3): 457-465.

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10.