Bitumen modified with recycled polyurethane foam for employment in hot mix asphalt

Abstract

A wide variety of modifiers have been applied to bitumen in order to enhance their properties and performance. Among them, polymers have been mainly used. The aim of this paper is to assess the use of polyurethane foam waste as a bitumen modifier for hot mix asphalts. The polyurethane foam is a by-product of the manufacturing of polyurethane for thermal insulation. From a bitumen with a penetration grade of 50/70, various samples with percentages of waste material in weight ranging from 1% to 5% were produced and tested. Samples with 5% of waste material or more became rough and were refused due to their poor workability. A bituminous mixture with modified bitumen with a 4% of polyurethane was manufactured and compared with a sample with the same aggregates and original bitumen. Results in Marshall test showed that a mix with polymer modified bitumen yielded improvements in stability and a lower deformability. This result suggests that the employment of polyurethane foam waste is a promising bitumen modifier, contributing also to recycle waste materials.

Research Trends in Pavement Management during the First Years of the 21st Century: A Bibliometric Analysis during the 2000–2013 Period

“…The exact expression "pavement management", which was employed in the search engine, occupied the 2nd place (in 252 documents). Nevertheless, other highly related expressions, including the word "pavement", were employed as keywords with a high incidence: "pavement performance" (75 times), "pavement condition" (73), "concrete pavements" (60), "pavement maintenance" (58), "pavement overlays" (56), "flexible pavements" (53), or "asphalt pavements" (51). In addition, the analysis of the main keywords, which did not include the "pavement" word, supported the previously exposed idea: the improvement of the classical PMSs by incorporation of new optimization strategies to ensure a better planning and administration framework, as the presence of keywords such as "maintenance", "highway administration", "decision making", "mathematical models", or "optimization" demonstrated.…”

“…As all pavement roads deteriorate with time, mainly due to traffic loading and weather actions [56], consistent and repeatable data collection is an indispensable element of a PMS. Traditionally, manual surveys were conducted for data collection, which were time consuming and biased.…”

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“…Today, there is considerable focus on the concept of "environmental protection and energy conservation", and low-carbon technology for asphalt pavement construction is gaining attention [33][34][35][36][37][38][39]. Therefore, low-carbon technologies are proposed based on the two types of carbon emissions, and mainly involve carbon emission reduction in terms of energy consumption and asphalt mixtures.…”

Flexural Strength Prediction Models for Soil–Cement from Unconfined Compressive Strength at Seven Days

“…At present, there is an international consensus about the necessity for a sustainable development, which makes researchers look for more environmentally friendly solutions, focused on both managing the natural resources more efficiently and reducing the carbon footprint [1,2,3,4,5,6,7].…”