Regular building materials offered satisfactory quality of road surfaces for many years. But the situation changed dramatically after a considerable growth of traffic intensity and traffic load. Bitumen ceased to ensuring proper road reliability and long service life.
The following issues became problematic:
- aging tendency;
- high thermal sensitivity;
- ow elasticity and poor mechanical properties.
All the problems above compelled scientists to start looking for methods of binder performance improvement. The result of almost 30 years of research was modified bitumen, that is, bitumen with special additives. It has been discovered that the best results as modifiers were shown by polymer materials.
Bitumen modified by polymers has higher quality, specifically:
- increase of ageing resistance;
- better resistance to fatigue load;
- improvement of elasto-plastic characteristics;
- higher performance at low and high temperatures;
- better adhesion and cohesion with fillers.
The degree of the improvements is determined by teh type of bitumen and polymer used, as well as the technology process of modification.
The best results can only be achieved if portioning of polymer is precise and the distribution of polymer in bitumen is uniform. High performance colloid mills ensure the best distribution.