Laboratory study on performances of bimaleimide/unsaturated polyester resin modified asphalt

Unsaturated polyester resin (UPR) modified asphalt mixture has excellent high-temperature stability, low-temperature crack resistance and water stability. However, there are still great gaps in Marshall stability and tensile strength between UPR modified asphalt mixture and epoxy modified asphalt mixture. Hence, UPR is modified by 4,4′-bismaleimi-dodiphenylmethane (BDM) and then it is used to prepare BDM/UPR modified asphalt in this paper. Then, the optimum formula of BDM/UPR modified asphalt is determined by tensile, viscosity, separation and fluorescence microscope tests. Finally, the performances of BDM/UPR modified asphalt are compared with those of epoxy modified asphalt and pure UPR modified asphalt. Results indicate that compared with pure UPR modified asphalt, the tensile strength of BDM/UPR modified asphalt is 27.2% higher, high-temperature performance is improved significantly and low-temperature performance is slightly worse, while the low-temperature performance of BDM/UPR modified asphalt is still better than that of epoxy modified asphalt. In economy, the cost of BDM/UPR modified asphalt is higher than that of pure UPR modified asphalt but it is only 0.69 times of that of epoxy modified asphalt.