Going the distance
Sep 27, 2012
Dr. Isaac Howard at Mississippi State University recently completed research regarding long hauls for emergency paving situations related to disaster
recovery purposes. They found that when it came to going the distance, Evotherm came out ahead. Hurricanes wipe out power for miles which limits conventional construction approaches. Being able to repair damaged roads far away from working asphalt mix plants should reduce recovery time by
increasing efficiency of all activities associated with response and recovery. While helping contractors through their day to day challenges is always rewarding, we are especially grateful to be part of a group of technologies that can reduce emergency response times in disaster areas
Researchers produced asphalt mix at a
full-scale facility and hauled the
material for different amounts of time before compacting test strips on a parking lot. They monitored every aspect of the process and tested approximately 175 laboratory compacted specimens, 750 field cores and over 100 field sawn slabs.
The results? Trucks hauled asphalt concrete up to 10.5 hours before placement. Rollers compacted the mix to 6.8 to 11.6% air voids based on
AASHTO T166. For haul distances of 8 hr or less, all mixes yielded a suitable road. From the executive summary of the report, "Evotherm 3G® modified asphalt was the only product the research team felt
comfortable taking to 10 hr (+) haul times. It’s
compaction ability at these haul times
was fairly remarkable, especially considering it was not different than traditional hot mixed
asphalt at conventional haul times."
The overall recommendation from this research is to use
hot-mixed and warm-compacted asphalt concrete as an emergency paving material for
disaster recovery applications. The approach has passed laboratory and full-scale testing. You can access the full report on their website. .
