Sealed accelerants facilitate epoxy asphalt concretes opening to traffic quickly

•Sealed macroporous resins and accelerants microcapsules were made, respectively.•Sealed macroporous resins containing accelerants quicken epoxy asphalt post-cure.•This approach facilitates epoxy asphalts to be ideal long-life paving materials.

Epoxy asphalt composites (EACs) have been recommended to be a prior choice to obtain long-life pavements. However, the present anhydrides-cured EACs have to be field-maintained in high summer for over 45 days to achieve their ultimate performance. To be opened to traffic immediately, sealed accelerants, triggered by the compact pressure when paved, were employed to accelerate post-cure of EACs. Compared with microcapsules complicatedly synthesized by interfacial polymerization, sealed macroporous-resins containing accelerants, which was simply prepared by covering accelerant-soaked macroporous-resins with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), made it possible to be opened to traffic quickly. It is attributed to the bigger capsule sizes and higher encapsulation efficiencies for them to be easier crushed by aggregates and encapsulate enough accelerants to be released when compacted. This paper reports the facile, low-cost and scalable approach to make anhydrides-cured EACs open to traffic quickly which facilitates EACs to be ideal long-life paving materials.

Graphical abstractDownload high-res image (163KB)Download full-size image