Reinforcing bituminous mixtures incorporating fibers

Several studies have been conducted to develop an economic, sustainable, and effective way to improve pavement resilience subjected to various distress types including moisture damage. Natural and synthetic fibers as one of the recently developed modifiers can be directly added to the mixtures and enhance pavement stiffness, fatigue, integrity as well as crack and rutting resistance. Numerous types of fibers including carbon, glass, carpet, steel, basalt, synthetic, etc. were developed and incorporated into material science including asphaltic materials constructions and repair works. However, it is hard to improve every aspect of mixture performance by incorporating only a singular admixture during production. It is worth notifying that fibers combination which can tackle and diminish the effects of different distress types on pavement performance were merely explored. This research will focus on the influence of different fibers application on asphalt mixture performance.

The main objective of this study is to optimize the rate of fiber application on mixtures properties under different environmental conditions which will be determined through mixtures characterization in the EMIB group’s laboratory. This project can benefit students by first learning the basic asphalt mixture and its constituents' properties, knowledge of mixtures preparation and testing, familiarizing with exacting standards, and understanding the beneficial aspects of using experimental software designs.