Highway Lab Report 8
Highway Lab Report 8
Highway Lab Report 8
Highway laboratory
We defined the softening point as the temperature at which a disc of bitumen softens
enough to allow a standard ball resting on it to move downward a distance of 25 mm.
Introduction
Because the softening of a bituminous material does not take place at any definite
temperature, but rather involves a gradual change in consistency with increasing
temperature, any procedure that is adopted for determining the softening point must
be of a somewhat arbitrary nature. The procedure in common use in highway materials
laboratories is known as the "ring-and-ball method" and may be applied to semisolid
and solid materials.
Practically, the temperature at which the softening bituminous material touch the
bottom metal plate placed 25 mm below the rings holders is recorded as the softening
point.
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Material and equipment
To obtain the point at which the bitumen becomes softening to use it to:
Test Procedure
Discussion
The experiment has been performed successfully and the softening point came out to
be 47.5 oC. Bitumen having this softening point should not be used in Jordan as the
city’s highest maximum temperature was 50 °C recorded on June 9, 2002 At the time
the meteorological office recorded this official temperature in the shade plus the fact
the we have a safety factor of a +10 degrees ,. So to avoid the problems of Rutting and
bleeding this bitumen should not be used .
Conclusions
If the difference between the two samples in the same test exceeds 1 0C, the test
must be repeated.
When we change the liquid in the bath there will be different in the results
because every liquid has a different boiling point and that affected the softening
point, so the lower boiling point need low temperature.
When we increasing the rate of heating, the softening point will be less than the
standard ( original ).
If there is sand in the sample the boiling point will be increase, then the softening
point will be increase.
When we use the same sample many times in this test ( reheating and retesting )
the results will have an error in the softening point because that will make the
material less viscous and we will get error in the results.
References
Course slides
Pavement Interactive web site
ASTM
appendix
none