Laboratory Evaluation of the Properties of Asphalt Mixture with Wood Ash Filler

Materials (Basel). 2021 Jan 26;14(3):575. doi: 10.3390/ma14030575.

Abstract

Today, the road construction profession is more than ever facing limited and increasingly expensive resources for component materials of asphalt mixtures, which has also led to the need for continuous research on the use of waste materials. One such potentially usable waste material is ash obtained by the combustion of wood biomass that is used to produce heat and electricity. The goal of this paper is to ascertain the possibility of using wood ash (WA) as the filler in asphalt concrete mixtures for the base-wearing layers of a pavement. The properties of Marshall stability (MS), quotient (MQ) and deformations, and the indirect tensile strength of water-conditioned samples and dry samples were tested on asphalt samples of an AC16 surf mixture with different contents of wood ash as the filler. The obtained values of MS and MQ indicate that a 50% content of bio ash in the filler results in an increase in asphalt's resistance to the appearance of plastic deformations and greater tensile strength and in good asphalt resistance to the action of water.

Keywords: hot mix asphalt; indirect tensile strength; physical and mechanical properties; resistance to action of water; sustainable road pavement design; wood ash (WA) by-product.