Effect of production process on performance properties of warm rubberized binders

Abstract

The study presents an experimental evaluation of performance properties of two different production processes of warm rubberized binder. Two types of rubberized binder were produced through dry process and wet process and two of the available wax additives were added into the rubberized binders (i.e., LEADCAP and Sasobit). Rubberized binders with wax additives were artificially short-term and long-term aged using the rolling thin film oven (RTFO) and pressure aging vessel (PAV) procedures. Superpave binder tests were carried out on the binders through the rotational viscometer (RV), the dynamic shear rheometer (DSR), and the bending beam rheometer (BBR). In general, the results of this study indicated that (1) the viscosity properties have been found to be similar between dry and wet processes, (2) the rubberized binders manufactured by wet process were observed to have the higher rutting resistance than those by dry process, (3) the wet process resulted in better performance in the fatigue cracking test than the dry process, and (4) the blending method was found to have little influence of stiffness properties. Keywords: Rubberized binder, Dry process, Wet process, Viscosity, Rutting, Fatigue cracking