Eurobitume UK a partner in award-winning research into the next generation of asphalt surfacings

Europe |

Within the Delivery section of the recently announced Highways England Awards, Eurobitume UK and its partners - Highways England, the Mineral Products Association (MPA) and engineering firm AECOM - won the prestigious ‘Promoting Safety and Quality With Automation in Road Construction’ award for their collaborative research project on the next generation of asphalt materials.

A sub-task report of the collaborative research project can be accessed from https://aecom.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/report_highways-england_task-1-444_subtask-2.pdf

The study yielded further understanding of how innovative technologies can assist in increasing the automation level of conventional Quality Control and Quality Assurance test methods. The adoption of similar technologies may result in a safer and more efficient quality management process. The research has provided a foundation for further development of the assessed technologies and future revision of specification requirements.

A task in the latest round of the collaborative research programme was to assess the feasibility of using reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) made with polymer modified bitumen (PMB) and recycling this into a new asphalt surfacing mixture. The laboratory testing showed that asphalt mixtures containing 50% RAP had properties comparable to asphalt containing no RAP.

A report on this work is expected to be published in the next couple of months, and it is proposed that these laboratory findings will now progress to full-scale plant and road trials.

Back