Effects of load and environment on the durability and anti-skid performance of road heat-reflective coating

•Studied the heat-reflective coating of asphalt pavement.•Systematically studied the durability of heat-reflective coating.•Investigated the effect of anti-skid particles on the cooling performance of coating.•Studied the optimal dosage of anti-skid particles. Reducing high temperature rutting on asphalt pavement is of great importance to improve the quality of pavement engineering and road traffic safety. In laboratory and field tests, this study investigates the cooling performance and optimal dosage of heat-reflective coatings. The temperature-change resistances, water stabilities, abrasion resistances, and skid resistances of six colored heat-reflective coatings were studied. Among the differently colored coatings, the red coating demonstrated the best cooling performance, with a maximum cooled temperature of 13.2 °C. The colored heat-reflective coatings showed good temperature-change resistance, water stability, and abrasion resistance. At dosages of 0.35 and 0.55 kg/m2, the heat-reflective coating met the specification requirements of skid resistance; meanwhile, the coating added at 0.75 kg/m2 achieved the highest cooling performance but failed to meet the required skid-resistance standards. After adding anti-skid particles, the skid resistance was improved while the cooling performance was hardly affected. The optimal dosage of anti-skip particles was 0.3 kg/m2.