A Study on Effect of Nano Material in the Properties of Bituminous Mixes

In India about 80% of road network comprises of flexible pavement in which unmodified bitumen (UMB) is used in the bituminous concrete layer. Due to rapid development, increase in the traffic load, higher traffic volume and variation in daily and seasonal temperature, flexible pavement shows distresses like rutting, fatigue and thermal cracking etc. which directly affect the durability and performance of pavement. To enhance the flexible pavement performance regarding fatigue and rutting so that bitumen need to be modified with some additives whose tendency is to empower the mix performance. Nano material is recently used as a bitumen modifier. In this study VG30 grade bitumen modify with addition of nanosilica with 1% to 5% (constant increment of 1%) by weight of bitumen. Hot mix asphalt of UMB and NSMB mixes have higher mixing, laying and rolling temperatures which leads to higher consumption of fuel. So that ZycoTherm, a chemical WMA additive at percentage of 0.10% and 0.15% are added to the UMB and NSMB binders. Nanosilica modification results in increase in stability compare to UMB. WMA modified mix shows slightly higher stability than UMB and NSMB in a lower bitumen content.