TRANSCRIPT: Asphalt mix design engineers are facing challenges in balancing requirements for roadway durability, sustainability, and cost. Using balanced mix design, or BMD, shifts the focus from volumetric properties to performance testing. This can help engineers optimize resistance to rutting, cracking, aging, and fatigue while also potentially reducing costs and leveraging eco-friendly solutions [...]
TRANSCRIPT: What makes roads age? What happens to aged roadway materials once they require replacement? Is there a way to recycle these materials into new roads? Let's check it out. Over time, roads age. Sun, heat, ice, rain, and heavy traffic eventually lead to rutting, cracking and dangerous potholes. Building new roads starts with removing the old [...]
Efforts to improve sustainability in asphalt paving are leading industry experts to explore more environmentally friendly methods to build and repair roadways. Using reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) that can reduce, if not eliminate, the need for new aggregate and binder in a mix has become an environmentally friendly and cost-effective consideration. Of 1,305 production plants surveyed by NAPA in [...]
Mix design engineers are constantly tasked with determining the right ratios of aggregate and binder to develop asphalt mixtures that will meet performance requirements. Traditionally, mix designs have employed volumetric analysis relying on the evaluation of compacted samples to determine properties such as air voids and voids in mineral aggregate, among others. For instance, the Marshall method includes tests [...]