Estudo da viabilidade do uso de fibras de coco em misturas asfálticas do tipo SMA.

Abstract

The variability of weather conditions, soil and traffic coupled with new technologies and expertise has led the engineering to develop a range of asphalt mixtures to better serve the imposed demands. One of these mixtures is the Stone Matrix Asphalt (SMA), the subject of this work. This is an open and discontinuous mixture, which requires a content of CAP higher than which is generally used in conventional mixtures. The high content of CAP causes the runoff of the CAP from the mixture and the use of fibers as stabilizing additive is suggested. The fibers may be natural or synthetic, however, with growing concern about sustainability, the use of coconut appears as an alternative. In this work, runoff evaluations and mechanical properties of SMA mixtures were done without and with the addition of fiber from coconut. The mechanical tests carried out were: tensile strength, modulus of resilience and Marshall stability, altering the content of the fiber used between 0.1% and 0.3%, and maintaining a 10 mm fiber length. Analyzing the results, it was noted that the use of fibers proved effective in improving the performance of the mixture in all the tests performed. In general, we canconclude that for the materials used, the Marshall design method performed with the fiber content of 0.3% was the one that presented the best results. In this way, the use of coconut fiber in asphalt mixtures of the type SMA was experimentally approved and becomes an alternative of final destination for this type of residue.