Estudo comparativo de partículas de vidro e mineral quartzo para produção de microesferas utilizadas em sinalização viária.

Abstract

The signaling systems are made up of road marks: markings, symbols and legends, in different types and colors. These systems are made up of sets of traffic signs applied on public roads in order to ensure better traffic flow promoting the safety of vehicles and pedestrians. In view of this, the horizontal signage consists of lines, markings, symbols and legends, painted or placed on the road pavement, using glass microspheres in their paintings, which promote better visibility of the demarcated roads. This better visibility occurs through the phenomenon of retroreflection when the ray of light strikes a surface and is redirected back to the light source through the microsphere. The present work aims to verify the feasibility of using hyaline quartz for the production of microspheres with better performance, through a comparative study of the visual characteristics of glass and quartz. The collected samples come from the area of Parelhas-RN, in that location there is a great amount of waste of flakes of hyaline quartz caused by the dismantling of rocks; the glass came from a beverage bottle. The research is divided into four stages: selective collection of material in the area, beneficiation tests, sphericity and luminosity tests and the application in asphalt mix. Throughout the studies, hyaline glass and quartz with two different particle sizes, particles with 45 and 50 meshes, respectively, were analyzed. Such materials, when compared, presented relevant results showing that quartz presents itself as a material with technological potential for the production of microspheres in road signaling, in terms of better signaling performance.