Archive | 2019
Performance of asphalt concrete with plastic fibres
Abstract
Abstract Fatigue cracks and rutting deformation are the key distresses affecting flexible pavement. The characteristics of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fiber were studied for the improvement of asphalt concrete performance against these distresses. Water absorption of recycled PET was found to be 0.18% which is very low. Tensile strength of recycled PET fiber was 218\xa0MPa which is enough to improve the performance of asphalt mixture. The reinforcement of asphalt mixes was conducted by adding 0.3%, 0.5%, 0.7%, and 1.0% of recycled PET fiber content by total weight of mixture. Static creep test was conducted on neat and PET fiber–reinforced asphalt mixtures. The result indicated improvement in resistance to permanent deformation and accumulated at 0.5% PET fiber–reinforced mixtures. To investigate the response of neat and recycled PET fiber–reinforced mixtures, resilient modulus test was conducted. The result shows a considerable improvement of resilient modulus at both 25oC and 40°C of recycled PET fiber–reinforced mixtures compared to neat mixture. This is also an indication of improved fatigue and rutting resistance. Generally, mixtures containing 0.5% recycled PET fibers performed better. Thus, it can be concluded that 0.5% recycled PET fiber is the optimum percentage for improvement of fatigue and rutting resistance of asphalt mixture.