Use of emulsion for warm mix asphalt

Due to increase in energy costs and emission problems in hot mix asphalt usually used, it brought a great interest to the researchers to develop the warm mix technology for pavement constructions. Commonly known as warm mix asphalt (WMA), it is a typical method in the bituminous paving technology, which allows production and placement of bituminous mixes at lower temperatures than that used for hot mix asphalt (HMA). The WMA involves an environmental friendly production process that utilises organic additives, chemical additives and water based technologies. The organic and chemical additives are normally very costly and still involve certain amount of environmental issues. These factors motivated the authors to take up this technology using simple, environment friendly and somewhat cost effective procedure. In this study, an attempt has been made to prepare warm mixes by first pre-coating the aggregates with medium setting bitumen emulsion (MS) and then mixing the semi-coated aggregates with VG 30 bitumen at a lower temperature than normally required. After a number of trials it was observed that mostly three mixing temperatures, namely temperatures 110°C, 120°C and 130°C were appropriate to form the bituminous mixes with satisfactory homogeneity and consistency and as such were maintained throughout this study. Marshall samples for paving mixes were prepared using this procedure for dense bituminous macadam (DBM) gradings as per the specifications of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH) and subsequently Marshall properties of the resultant mixes were studied with the main objective of deciding the different parameters that were considered for development of appropriate warm mix asphalt. In this study it has been observed that out of three mixing temperatures tried, the mixes prepared at 120°C with bitumen-emulsion composition of 80B:20E for DBM warm mix, offer highest Marshall stability and highest indirect tensile strength (ITS), while satisfying the other Marshall parameters. It is also seen that the optimum binder contents for warm mixes are 5.1% with 80B:20E bitumen-emulsion composition for warm mix, prepared at 120°C. The tensile strength ratio and retained stability parameters are also found to be reasonably satisfactory in such warm mixes, thus prepared.