Properties of Bituminous Binder Modified with Polyethylene

Abstract

Bitumen is used as a binder in construction of flexible pavements since long. With the increase in population and number of vehicles, load on roads have been increased day by day. Thus roads which consist of unmodified bitumen suffer from serious drawbacks in the due course of time like rutting, thermal cracking, fatigue cracking, pothole formation etc. Hence, it is necessary to add a modifier in bitumen to enhance the binding property of later. Polyethylene, which is a non-degradable compound, become waste and creates pollution, owing to its high consumption. This polyethylene (melting point 120-180 C; thermal degradation above 400 C) in liquid state becomes sticky in nature and therefore can act as a binder. Also, major parts of both polyethylene and bitumen are hydrocarbon, hence polyethylene wastes (LDPE and HDPE) can be used to modify the bitumen and enhance the binder property of it. Like polyethenes, degradation of other polymeric wastes is also challenging and can be utilized for other purposes for minimizing the wastes and improvement in quality of available products.