The Physical and Engineering Properties of 60/70 Bitumen with Carbon Black Additives

The increasing of human population has increases the needs for them to travel from one place to another. Due to this, the use of vehicles has increase which also increases the loadings on the flexible pavement. Due to that, the demand for better pavement to withstand all the harsh condition also increased. In this report, one of the constituent of the flexible pavement i.e. the bitumen is being focused on to be improved. The selected bitumen grade is 60/70 bitumen.
Bitumen is a result of the petroleum condensation process. Its grade is determined based on their properties. On the other hand, carbon black is a black pigment of rubber which produced from either furnace or thermal black processes. In this project, by adding carbon black into the bitumen, the bitumen’s physical and engineering properties are investigated after mixing it with 2 types of carbon blacks with different percentages according to the weight of the bitumen.
The bitumen with carbon black additives are tested using penetration and softening point tests in the laboratory. As the result, both additives improve the virgin bitumen’s performance. The details of the results are described in Result and Discussion section.
As the conclusion, the presence of carbon black in the bitumen does improve the properties of the bitumen. Hence, the bitumen helps in resistance upon problems such as rutting and cracking. The increment value of Penetration Index (PI) also further confirms the improvement of bitumen after added with carbon black. However, several recommendations are recommended in order to obtain better results and to have further results to be in the specification ranges of standard.