Self-Healing Mechanism in Bitumen and Asphalt Pavement
Document Type : Original Article
Authors
Assistant Professor, Highways and Transportation Engineering, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology, Babol, Iran.
Abstract
Roads are considered as the infrastructural and strategic capital of each country. A main part of the budget is allocated to the repair and maintenance of the roads. Any damage to the asphalt pavement will cause disturbance in the performance of the vehicles, which result in reduced driving safety and reduced riding levels. The damages to the asphalt pavement are due to various factors. In general, due to traffic jams, these damages emerge as small cracks in the pavement system, among which fatigue and cracks resulting from are the main causes of failure in the asphalt pavement. In fact, as a result of repeated loading, these small cracks are expanded in the form of fatigue cracking and eventually cause the rupture of the structure of the asphalt pavement. A major part of the annual budget is allocated to the repair and maintenance of the roads and eradicates the damages caused by the cracks. One of the factors that can be effective in increasing the fatigue life of the asphalt pavement is the self-healing potential of bitumen and asphalt. Self-healing means the ability to retrieve mechanical properties such as rigidity and resistance, as well as the return of displacement resulting from the opening of the cracks during the rest period and the high temperature period. In this research, the self-healing phenomenon and the factors affecting it are investigated, and the indices for measuring this asphaltic phenomenon are introduced and the results of the most recent studies are presented
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