Microwave parameters for bitumen emulsion and its application in highway engineering

Abstract

Bitumen emulsion is used as a bonding material between two layers and partially acts as a water proofing agent; it gained more importance when there were environmental concerns with cutbacks bitumen. A very few properties of bitumen emulsions are known so far from its physical and chemical prospective. However, a new method to measure its dielectric properties i.e. permittivity by applying electromagnetic waves (microwaves) with open ended coaxial probe (OCP) method was investigated in this study at different temperatures and frequency of 8 to 12 GHz. After examining the physical properties of certain bitumen emulsion a correlation was established on the basis of dielectric constant (permittivity) with the existing conventional property viscosity at temperature of 25, 40, 50 and 60°C. On the basis of these properties different characteristics of the bitumen emulsion were found and hence, a correlation was established to predict its behavior. A good correlation factor was found for the four types of samples used in the study which were 0.98 for SS-1K, 0.99 for MS-1K, 1.00 for RS-1K and 0.99 for K1-40. This study has provided an effective parameter to measure and predict the behavior of bitumen emulsion at different temperature, which can be applied in highway industry.