Abstract: PERFORMANCE TESTS ON BITUMEN AND BITUMEN MIXES
In this page we present an extract from the article “Performance tests on bitumen and bitumen mixes” by Pietro Ferrari.
In the whole article, the Author intends to highlight how it is now possible to have a more engineering-based approach to design and construct bituminous road pavements, intervening both in definition of the bitumen mix and in choice of the binder which is its active component.
The empirical tests used until now – and which have given excellent results over time, keeping under control groupings of requisites obtained from the experience gained over the years – are no longer sufficient for supporting the leap in quality of paving. Roads now must have increasingly extreme and durable performance over time, due to the continual increase of road traffic (in terms of frequency, weight and load time).
Test methods and the relative laboratory equipment currently exist in PAVELAB® SYSTEMS and IPC Global® ranges (Read more…), all complying with standards, which allow to identify the performance requisites which are necessary to guarantee extreme and durable quality of the surfacing.
This approach, which has been used in the USA for over two decades through the SuperPave system, as part of the SHRP research program, should hopefully completely adopted and consolidated by other countries.”
As well known, SuperPave (Superior Performing Asphalt Pavements) is a product of the SHRP (Strategic Highway Research Program) asphalt research. The system, as Asphalt Institute SP-2 mentions, “incorporates performance -based, asphalt material characterization with design environmental conditions to improve performance by controlling rutting, low temperature cracking and fatigue cracking.”