BASE COURSE WITH HARD PAVING GRADE AND WEARING COURSE WITH MULTIGRADE BITUMEN: AN INNOVATIVE COUPLE TO FIGHT THE RUTTING AND REDUCE COSTS OF ROAD MAINTENANCE ON THE LONG-TERM. EXPERIMENTS IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM

This paper describes how employed in base courses, the hard paving grades 15/25, 10/20 even 0/10, allow to reach very high levels of asphalt stiffness modulus (12.000 to 22.000 MPa at 15 degrees Centigrade and 10 Hz), sometimes close to those of cement-bounded materials. Finalized in the 1980's, the new multigrade bituminous binders became widespread in the 1990's to most of the European producers of bitumen and were the subject of many papers. A lot of road trials of technical demonstration were realized with multigrade bitumen, showing the evidence of the major interest of these products with regard to the normal paving grades, namely a decrease by two of the rut globally registered on courses for the same formulation of bituminous mix, including same aggregates. These bitumen, generally 35/50 graded, sometimes 20/30 even 50/70 became of a common use within the European Union. All these innovations allow to significantly reduces the quantities of materials to be used in the construction and especially to decrease the costs of maintenance, due to an increase of the longevity of both the base and the wearing courses, generally some years. Preliminary results of an experiment realized in the LCPC in France and practical examples of construction sites realized in Belgium on trials with high mechanical constraints such as service stations, and using the innovative couple "base course with hard paving grade and wearing course with multigrade bitumen", are described in this paper.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Full conference proceedings available on CD-ROM.
• Corporate Authors:

  World Road Association (PIARC)

  La Grande Arche, Paroi Nord, Niveau 5
  F-92055 La Defense Cedex,   France 
• Authors:
  • Jamois, D
  • Berger, J
  • Such, C
  • Verschooren, J
• Conference:
  • The XXIInd PIARC World Road Congress
  • Location: Durban, South Africa
  • Date: 2003-10-19 to 2003-10-25
• Publication Date: 2003

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: 8p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Aggregates; Base course (Pavements); Bitumen; Bituminous mixtures; Construction; Maintenance; Paving; Rutting; Wearing course (Pavements)
• Subject Areas: Construction; Design; Geotechnology; Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; Materials; Pavements; I22: Design of Pavements, Railways and Guideways;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00986183
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Feb 16 2005 12:00AM