MSU Technologies

Asphalt Foam Collapse Test (AFCT)

Executive Summary

Warm mix asphalt (WMA) has been growing in use, and currently comprises over 40% of the asphalt used in the US. This product is made by foaming the binder before the aggregate is added, to produce a workable material that can be applied at much lower temperatures than hot mix asphalt concrete (HMAC). The foam bubble quantity and size in the foamed binder are important parameters to control, and this is typically done by manual adjustment of the bubbling process at the production site. MSU researchers have developed a simple asphalt foam collapse test (AFCT) and analysis software that can be used to measure binder foam quality during production, which allows rapid process adjustments to improve product quality.

Description of Technology

This technology is a mechanical system that takes a fresh inline sample of foamed binder and measures volume contraction over time. The data is used to calculate WMA parameters which can be optimized in order to greatly improved WMA quality. The patent covers a method of producing a asphalt concrete product that includes incorporating data from the test data which may include bubble size distribution and bubble surface area parameters.

Key Benefits

Allows asphalt batch plants to optimize foaming operations prior to adding aggregate, thus improving product quality
Customization-Consumers would be afforded the option of optimizing their WMA usage depending on different important WMA quality parameters

Applications