Influence of foaming effect, operation time and health preserving properties of foam epoxy asphalt mixtures

Epoxy asphalt is provided with excellent performance. However, its construction time is too short for the current situation in China, which therefore has brought about the issues with harsh conditions, high costs and risks. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a new foamed epoxy asphalt (FEA), and adopts a new curing system. To investigate the hardening system effect on foamed epoxy asphalt, 3 key points in FEA research have been proposed, namely foaming effect, influence of waiting time for compacting during construction, and strength grows in health preserving. Conventional Marshall method is used for the preparation of the testing specimens. The results obtained showed that the optimum foaming temperature is 120 °C, with the optimum water consumption being 2% relatively; the minimum compacting temperature of FEA mixt is 56 °C, and its longest waiting time for compacting is 6 h. At least 50 days of health preserving time is recommended after the completion of the construction of the FEA paving, which equals to 24 h at a constant temperature of 60 °C preserving for the future laboratory study due to the time-temperature equivalence rule.