Eco-friendly asphalt pavement: Experimental research of modified natural asphalt mixture using waste polyvinyl chloride
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Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq
Corresponding author
Roaa Hamed
Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq
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ABSTRACT
With obstacles surrounding environmental issues and petroleum asphalt (PA), road scientists are putting their effort into finding a practical alternative. Furthermore, the increasing amount of plastic waste has led to serious environmental problems, which has spurred the development of sustainable recycling solutions in pavement engineering. Therefore, the proposed research is an attempt to check if the modified natural asphalt (NA) with waste Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) can be used as a comparable alternative to PA in paving works. The assessment of NA sourced from Mamora deposit in Iraq was carried out. The PVC was added to NA at three percentages (4%, 5%, and 6%) by NA weight. Before conducting the mixture scale tests using Marshall, Cantabro, and indirect tensile strength, the physical, workability, storage stability, and chemical properties of the extracted NA and modified binders were examined then compared to PA. The results indicated that the penetration decreased and the softening point increased for NA with the increase of PVC content, which means that the stiffness and the resistance to high-temperature deformation increased. The temperature sensitivity index results also showed a significant decrease in thermal susceptibility. The SEM observations showed that the dispersion of PVC in the NA matrix was effective, and FTIR analysis demonstrated that there was no significant chemical reaction between PVC and NA. The incorporation of PVC exceptionally reduced the fluidity of NA binders. The results indicate that 6% PVC provided the most favorable performance among the investigated dosages for the selected properties but exhibited unacceptable static storage stability according to the adopted criterion, exceeding the maximum acceptable limit by 2.1 ºC. Furthermore, the modified asphalt mixture had higher stiffness index, greater tensile strength ratio, and significantly better resistance to moisture-induced abrasion damage by 8.4%, 9%, and 85.4%, respectively, than reference asphalt mixture. To sum up, waste PVC can be used as a sustainable modifier for NA with both environmental and engineering benefits, and enhance the pavement performance in terms of mechanical abrasion resistance, and moisture-induced damage.