Comparison between bitumen modified with crumb tyre rubber and styrene butadiene styrene

Abstract

The improvements in terms of mechanical properties due to the use of polymers to modify bitumens in road paving applications have already been widely demonstrated. The aim of this paper is to show how the rheology and the performance of a bituminous binder mixed with crumb rubber recycled from used tyres (CR-MB), could be comparable with a styrene butadiene styrene (SBS-MB) created with the same base binder and currently used for road applications. Physical, chemical and performance characterization followed by rheological and storage stability analyses have been undertaken as the basis for the comparison. The results of the investigation indicate that the blended CR-MB shows large improvements with respect to the base bitumen, comparable with the SBS-MB under almost all the conditions. However, in order to use this binder for practical purposes, major work regarding the improvement of the storage stability of the CR-MB still needs to be done.