Anti-Stripping Asphalt Pavement
Prevent stripping with ELVALOY™ RET
Think about the weather conditions you travel in. Perhaps monsoon season brings heavy rains, relentlessly pouring down on roads for weeks at a time. Maybe blistering summers transitions to cold winters over the course of a few months. Wherever you live, the roads you travel on have to be able to withstand moisture and temperature cycling, especially in freeze-thaw cycles.
Asphaltic cement enhanced by ELVALOY™ Reactive Elastomeric Terpolymer (RET) is shown in lab tests to improve pavement service life in these conditions, due to reduced moisture susceptibility causing better asphalt binder adhesion to aggregate.
The Statz Freeze-Thaw Cycle Test
Robert Statz, Ph.D., was among the early DuPont scientists exploring the use of ELVALOY as an asphalt polymer modifier. To simulate the effects of outdoor weathering, he subjected samples of binder-coated aggregate to successive freeze-thaw cycles.
U.S. highway research program reports moisture resistance results for modified asphalts
The U.S. Federal Highway Administration conducted a study to determine the effects of 11 asphalt binders on the moisture sensitivity of mixtures, using a Hamburg Wheel-Tracking Device (Hamburg WTD).
The Hamburg WTD tests a slab of hot-mix asphalt submerged in hot water by rolling a steel wheel across its surface. The device tested side-by-side slabs simultaneously using two reciprocating solid steel wheels applying a 685-N load at an average speed of 1.1 km/h.
"The statistical ranking ... shows that only the mixture with ELVALOY performed better than the PG 70-22 control mixture at a 5-percent level of significance," excerpted from “Understanding the Performance of Modified Asphalt Binders in Mixtures: Evaluation of Moisture Sensitivity” (FHWA-RD-02-029) by Kevin D. Stuart, John S. Youtcheff and Walaa S. Mowager
India, Side-by-Side Lane Inspection
On a highway in India, binder made with ELVALOY RET asphalt modifier was used alongside an unmodified binder. Lanes were photographed years later, and showed a visible difference in binder retention.
