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Article history: The aim of the research was to evaluate the properties of foamed bitumen, produced from a Fischer–
Received 20 June 2014 Tropsch synthetic wax modified 50/70 penetration grade bitumen for use as a binder in road construction
Received in revised form 2 February 2015 layers. The binders were subjected to conventional tests (including penetration, softening point, Fraass
Accepted 20 February 2015
breaking point and dynamic viscosity) as well as bitumen-foam-specific testing (including expansion
Available online 13 March 2015
ratio, half-life and foam index at different foaming water contents). Optimum amounts of foaming
water and Fischer–Tropsch wax were identified and the binders were classified as relevant for different
Keywords:
low-energy bitumen mix production techniques.
Foamed bitumen
Fischer–Tropsch wax
Ó 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Foaming water content (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Expansion ratio
Half-life
Foam index
Half-Warm Mix Asphalt
Cold Mix Asphalt
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2015.02.060
0950-0618/Ó 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
M. Iwański et al. / Construction and Building Materials 83 (2015) 62–69 63
This parameter correlates well with the penetration index and it is favorable
2. Materials and research methodology when PR exceeds 60 °C [9].
Low values of those both indices (IP, PR) suggest an increased temperature sus-
2.1. Tested materials ceptibility of the binder.
Analysis of variance was used to test for the significance of the FT wax impact
Different types of bitumen are used in road construction industry, which physi- on the measured bitumen properties.
cal and rheological properties depend on many factors such as crude oil source, pro-
cessing, detailed chemistry and colloidal structure [9]. Jenkins in one of his works
[10] has confirmed the influence of all the mentioned factors on the quality of pro- 2.4. Foamed bitumen properties
duced bitumen foam. Each type of bitumen behaves differently when subjected to
foaming. As the harder bitumen tends to clog the expansion chamber and the spray The physical characteristics of the bitumen foam were evaluated with the use of
nozzle orifices, higher-grade bitumen is preferred, where clogging is practically two empirical parameters: maximum expansion ratio (ERm) and half-life (HL) [10].
eliminated [10]. Softer bitumen gives foams of better properties, but has a negative ERm is a measure of the bitumen foam viscosity and therefore it is an estimate of
impact on providing bituminous mixtures with proper resistance to permanent how well the foam can be dispersed in the aggregates to create an uniform
deformation (rutting). Bissada [11] and Abel [12] also observed that soft grades of mineral–bitumen mix. Half-life indicates the foam stability and provides approxi-
bitumen (with lower viscosities) have better foaming properties, higher expansion mate information about the speed of foam decay [3]. Those parameters are inver-
ratio and longer half-life (HL) than the hard grades (with higher viscosities), which sely proportional in terms of FWC – increase in FWC leads to an increase in ERm
in turn ensure better dispersion and proper coating of the mineral material. and decrease in HL, and vice versa [16].
Different behavior in respect to decay parameters of two penetration grades (PG) Bitumen foam characterization based on those two basic parameters (ERm, HL)
of bitumen (PG 60, PG 100) was reported by He and Wong [13]. Under the same test provides only partial information about the foaming capabilities of the bitumen.
conditions (bitumen temperature, air pressure, and water content), higher values of Another parameter – the foam index (FI) is needed to complement the analysis. FI
expansion ratio (ER) were obtained for harder binders. In addition, He and Wong takes into account the time dependency of the expansion ratio [10]. Foam index
observed a reverse relationship when analyzing HL, which was longer for the softer is formulated as in Eq. (3):
bitumen (PG 100). It was concluded that the major factor in the observed relation-
ships was the difference in viscosity between the binders.
HL 4 1þc
The most commonly used binders in Polish road construction are: unmodified FI ¼ 4 ERm 4 ln þ ERm ts ð3Þ
ln 2 ERm 2c
20/30, 35/50, 50/70 penetration bitumens and polymer modified bitumens
(PMBs) PMB 25/55-60 and PMB 45/80-55 [14,15]. The aim of the research was to
evaluate the characteristics of a foamed 50/70 binder and its potential for use in where c is a correction coefficient (c = ERm/ERa), HL is the half-life (s), ts is the spray-
production of road structural layers. To explore its broader range of applications, ing time, ERm is the measured maximum expansion ratio, and ERa is the actual
the bitumen was modified with the synthetic FT wax, which by decreasing the bitu- expansion ratio.
men viscosity at temperatures above 100 °C [6] (before foaming) contributes favor- The foam parameters (ERm, HL, FI) of modified and unmodified bitumens were
ably to the foaming parameters associated with proper foam dispersion and evaluated during the second stage of the conducted research. The measurements
aggregate coating. Moreover, an improvement in mechanical parameters of the were taken under laboratory conditions using Wirtgen WLB 10S bitumen foaming
mineral–bitumen mix (rutting resistance in particular) is expected due to the pres- plant, which is commonly used laboratory equipment [17,18]. The tests were
ence of FT wax increasing the bitumen viscosity at service temperatures [5,6]. carried out with the following arrangements:
1000
100
10
END OF MIXING
1 50/70 + 0% FT
50/70 + 1% FT
50/70 + 2% FT
50/70 + 3% FT
0.1
50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170
Temperature [ºC]
Fig. 6. Influence of the FT content on the dynamic viscosity of the 50/70 bitumen in a temperature range from 60 °C to 160 °C.
Fig. 8. Influence of the FT content and FWC on the expansion ratio of the 50/70 Fig. 9. Influence of the FT content and FWC on the foam half-life of the 50/70
bitumen. bitumen.
M. Iwański et al. / Construction and Building Materials 83 (2015) 62–69 67
Table 2
Evaluation of significant influence (ANOVA) of the FT and FWC factors on ERm, HL and
FI.
Table 3
Properties of foamed bitumen at optimum FWC.
FI=-167.085+96.900*FT+1.194*FT^2+140.991*FWC-20.530*FWC^2-8.249*FT*FWC
R2=0.860092, p-value < 0.0001
ERm=0.305536+3.751548*FT+3.660*FWC
R2=0.956766, p-value < 0.0001 Fig. 12. Influence of the FT content and FWC on the foam index.
Fig. 10. Influence of the FT content and FWC on the foam expansion ratio.
On the other hand, according to Technical Guideline TG2 [26] the Based on the measured characteristics of the foamed bitumen
minimum allowable values of ERm and HL are 10 and 6 s for aggre- (ERm, HL, FI) it was possible to accordingly assign the investigated
gate temperatures from 10 °C to 25 °C and ERm P 8, HL P 6 s binders for use in different types of bituminous mixes. This classi-
when aggregate temperature is above 25 °C. Muthen [3] suggests fication is presented in Table 5.
68 M. Iwański et al. / Construction and Building Materials 83 (2015) 62–69
Table 4
Evaluation of the statistical models for the ERm, HL and FI responses.
Response Effect Param. SE t p-Value 95.00% Cnf. Lmt +95.00% Cnf. Lmt
ERm Intercept 0.305536 0.597614 0.51126 0.612052 0.903254 1.514325
FT 3.751548 0.161923 23.16865 0.00000 3.424027 4.079069
FWC 3.660000 0.189625 19.30122 0.00000 3.276447 4.043553
HL Intercept 19.94271 0.553593 36.0241 0.00000 18.82296 21.06246
FT 1.56167 0.149996 10.4114 0.00000 1.25827 1.86506
FWC 3.90873 0.175657 22.2521 0.00000 4.26403 3.55343
FI Intercept 167.085 63.17058 2.64498 0.012031 295.201 38.9693
FT 96.900 24.21063 4.00237 0.000299 47.798 146.0013
FT^2 1.194 5.78273 0.20655 0.837522 10.533 12.9224
FWC 140.991 45.41639 3.10441 0.003703 48.882 233.0999
FWC^2 20.530 8.03065 2.55648 0.014937 36.817 4.2432
FT * FWC 8.249 5.86476 1.40661 0.168117 20.144 3.6448
Table 5 – optimum FWCs were as follows: a 2.5% FWC was established for
Classification of the investigated 50/70 base and modified binders for CMA and the 50/70 bitumen with 0.0% to 1.0% FT content, a 2.0% FWC was
HWMA mineral–bitumen mixes. established for the binder with 1.5–2.5% FT content and 1.5%
Foamed- FT wax Foaming parameters FWC was established for the binder with 3.0% FT,
bitumen– content – the most favorable foaming results were achieved for the bitu-
c ERm ERa HL FI (s) FWC
mineral mix (%)
(s) (%)
men containing 2.0%, 2.5% and 3.0% of FT wax, which could be
type used for both CMA and HWMA mixes, whereas the remaining
CMA (Cold Mix 0.0 0.86 11.06 12.86 10.23 86.94 2.5 blends were adequate only for CMA mixes.
Asphalt) 0.5 0.86 12.08 14.05 10.38 103.04 2.5
1.0 0.85 12.78 15.04 11.98 121.57 2.5
1.5 0.87 14.83 17.05 12.89 163.17 2.0
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CMA and 2.0 0.89 17.26 19.39 16.42 248.16 2.0
HWMA (Half 2.5 0.90 18.18 20.20 17.68 284.79 2.0
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