EVALUATION OF RUTTING PERFORMANCE OF HOT MIX ASPHALT CONTAINING POLYMER ADDITIVES

In recent decades, escalating traffic volumes initiate asphalt pavements revealed to larger stresses, which can create premature distresses. To enhance the resistance to distresses, modification of the asphalt mixtures has been studied extensively. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the performance of asphalt pavement made with various bitumen types and also different thicknesses. The bitumen types used were conventional asphalt (Ac 60-70) and polymer modified asphalt (PG 76-22). The thickness of asphalt samples tested was 70, 80, and 90 mm. In this study, Accelerated Pavement Testing (APT) was conducted to evaluate the rut depth in the surface of the pavement. The experiment was run up to 20,000 cycles. The results revealed polymer has a significant effect on pavement resistance to rutting. The resistance can be increased by up to 30%. In addition, the rutting occurred rapidly for the first 3,000 cycles. Beyond 3,000, the deformation is increased slowly. On the other side, the results showed that as the HMA thickness increases as the resistance to deformation increases. We, therefore, can conclude that adding particles of polymer to HMA could improve the structural performance of pavement i.e. rutting resistance and reduce the thickness of the surface