What Makes Foam Bitumen Your Paving Solution?
Posted on: 17 September 2019
Neatly done pavements have two significant effects on your business premise. First, they make it easy for your guests to drive around. Secondly, good paving increases the value of the property because of the cost involved in sculpturing the topography into the final product. For years, bitumen has been a go-to material for anyone laying pavements on his or her premises. Technological advancement in road construction has borne materials such as foam bitumen. Such progress can make life better for you. In this piece, you will learn about everything that you need to know about foam bitumen.
Producing Foam Bitumen
Paving contractors make foam bitumen from regular bitumen used for standard road construction. Preferably, the contractors use the method of cold recycling, through which they use old bitumen to make foam bitumen. The process involves injecting small volumes of air and water into a high-pressure chamber that contains hot bitumen. The bitumen expands significantly to many times its original size. After expansion, the paving contractors move the foam bitumen into a mixer, in which they will mix it with other cold materials when paving.
Properties of Foam Bitumen
Foam bitumen has amazing properties for your driveway. First, foam bitumen has better adhesion bonds compared to ordinary bitumen. The cold mixture of foam bitumen and other construction materials increases strength through high inter-particle friction. Secondly, foam bitumen also boasts better flexibility and capacity to bear loads. Its high level of viscosity means that there are tighter bonds when the material dries, which enhances its ability to withstand loads.
When to Use Foam Bitumen
A good understanding of the conditions that require the use of foam bitumen will go a long way in helping you make the most of it. The first appropriate use of foam bitumen is repairing a paved driveway that you have patched multiple times in the past. With such roads, it gets to a point where patching is no longer cost-effective. Therefore, it makes sense to do some cold recycling, produce foam bitumen and use it for comprehensive repairs.
Secondly, foam bitumen also comes in handy when you have a weak base overlying a stronger subgrade on the paved driveway. Lastly, you can also make the most of foam bitumen if your driveway is a victim of uncontrollable overloading. You can rely on the densely packed foam bitumen to do a good job.
For more information, contact a company that works with foam bitumen.
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