Overview of the development of asphalt pavement

1. The development history of asphalt pavement: About 600 AD, the first asphalt pavement was built in Babylon, but this technology was soon lost. Taking the discovery of rock asphalt in Switzerland in 1712 as an opportunity, it was subsequently discovered in Germany, France and other countries. Around 1850, France first used rock asphalt for road pavement. In 1854, a thin-layer asphalt pavement close to the present was built in Paris, which can be called the beginning of hot rock asphalt pavement. The rock asphalt that was used at that time was limestone that was infiltrated with 6 to 10% asphalt content. It was broken into fine particles, heated, paved and rolled to form an asphalt pavement. The maximum particle size is 2.5mm, and more than 40% of the particles pass through 0.074mm, making it an advanced pavement structure at that time.

The United States did not import a large amount of rock asphalt from France and Switzerland until 1850, and began to build rock asphalt pavements centered in the east. By 1900, only 25,000m2 of rock asphalt pavement could be recorded in New York City. In 1871, E.J. Desdment succeeded in paving asphalt pavement with sand, gravel, and Tenerit Lake asphalt in New York City, and obtained a construction patent. This was the beginning of modern hot-paved lake asphalt pavement. In 1872, the City of Washington compared the rock asphalt pavement construction method with the construction method using limestone powder, sand, mixed with lake asphalt and petroleum residue oil, and proved that both could adapt to the traffic requirements of the time. This can be said to be a precedent for the construction of test pavements with rock asphalt and lake asphalt. The usage of the test road became the basis for changing the road material from rock asphalt to lake asphalt. This was also the beginning of the application of petroleum residue oil to the road surface.

In 1885, the automobile powered by gasoline was invented, and in 1887, the pneumatic tire was invented, which marked the rise of the automobile industry. Since the load of automobiles is different from that of horse-drawn carriages, in order to meet the needs of the load, the United States added gravel to the stone powder, sand, and asphalt mixture, and invented the Warrenitebitulithic pavement, that is, the lower layer is coarse-graded asphalt concrete and the upper layer is asphalt sand. Paving a layer of rolled double-layer asphalt concrete pavement, which is the origin of asphalt concrete pavement. By 1905, Topeka pavement was produced as a wearing layer in Topeka, USA, which made the asphalt pavement structure more perfect.

In 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court made a ruling that allowed automobile factories to freely manufacture automobiles. Transportation officially entered the era of automobile transportation, which put forward higher requirements for road surfaces. For this reason, the original test method for asphalt concrete—the Hubbard-Field method—appeared in 1920. Asphalt pavement paver was produced in 1930, and highway construction began in 1934. Since then, asphalt pavement has become the main form of modern high-grade pavement.

2. The development of asphalt pavement in my country: In 1935, my country used imported asphalt to test the asphalt pavement section near Nanjing; in 1941, it built an asphalt double-layer surface treatment of 155km on the Burma Highway; after the victory of the war, Asphalt penetration and double-layer asphalt surface treatment asphalt pavements were also built on the Nanjing-Hangzhou Highway. By the eve of 1949, there were about 315km of high-grade and sub-high-grade roads in my country.

Highway construction has developed greatly after the founding of New China. Before the 1980s, there was still a considerable gap in the speed and quality of highway construction in my country compared with developed countries. Entering the 1990s Since then, the quantity and quality of highway construction in our country have been greatly improved. The gap with developed countries is narrowing. The following table shows the development of highway mileage in my country in the 1990s. By the end of 2000, my country's highway mileage had reached 1.6798 million kilometers. By the end of 2001, my country's highway mileage had reached 19,453 kilometers, ranking second in the world.

According to the information available [3], the surface structures of expressways built in the early 1990s were mostly LH, AC, AK, and SAC structures. In the mid-to-late 1990s, with the deepening of people’s understanding, combined with the use of expressways, Problems that arise during the process, it is believed that the structural form of the anti-skid surface layer should be improved. Therefore, a considerable part of the surface layer adopts SMA, which is a relatively new pavement structural form in China