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Title:

Structural Design of Sulfur-Modified Warm-Mix Asphalt

Accession Number:

01155677

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Abstract:

It has been well documented that flexible pavement material stiffness significantly influences fatigue cracking and rutting performance. Therefore, choosing high-modulus asphalt concrete has the potential to increase the overall life of the pavement. One such material, sulfur-modified asphalt concrete, stems from 1970s sulfur-extended asphalt (SEA) technology in which hot liquid sulfur replaced a fraction of the asphalt binder. Recently, the SEA technology has been improved; sulfur pellets and warm-mix asphalt (WMA) additives are introduced into the mixing drum to produce sulfur-modified WMA, thereby eliminating the use of hot liquid sulfur, reducing production temperatures and fume emissions. Benefits also include the improvement of the pavement performance, structurally. Based on the laboratory experiment, dynamic modulus testing of four sulfur-modified WMA mixtures resulted in an overall increase in the stiffness relative to three control hot-mix asphalt mixtures, with significant improvements observed at high temperatures. Beam fatigue testing of these laboratory mixtures generated fatigue performance curves, indicating slightly shorter fatigue lives for high strain levels relative to a control mixture. The Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide was used to evaluate eight hypothetical cross-sections comprised of sulfur-modified WMA relative to a control section planned for further full-scale testing at the National Center for Asphalt Technology’s (NCAT) Test Track. This analysis predicted improvements in fatigue cracking and rutting in all eight sulfur-modified cross-sections over the control section. Additionally, it was found that among the sulfur modified mixes, increases in the amount of sulfur and the design air voids further improved predicted performance relative to the control cross-section.

Monograph Accession #:

01147878

Report/Paper Numbers:

10-3697

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Timm, David H
May, Richard W
Taylor, Adam Joel
Tran, Nam
Robbins, Mary M

Pagination:

16p

Publication Date:

2010

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2010-1-10 to 2010-1-14
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

DVD

Features:

Figures (5) ; References (12) ; Tables (2)

Subject Areas:

Highways; Materials; Pavements; I31: Bituminous Binders and Materials; I52: Construction of Pavements and Surfacings

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2010 Paper #10-3697

Files:

TRIS, TRB

Created Date:

Jan 25 2010 11:53AM