Geographical Zoning of Asphalt Binder for Iran According on Performance Grade

In order to construct new durable pavements, it is necessary to have the ability to predict the performance of hot mixed asphalt concrete (HMAC) when selecting appropriate asphalt binder. Common system of bitumen nomenclature has based on penetration. In spite of classical assortment of asphalt binder, Super Pave performance grading (PG) specifications was developed to relate bitumen properties to field performance and allow the selection of appropriate bitumen for a specific climatic condition. Theoretically and directly bitumen properties according on super pave are based on efficiency and nowadays it used to a current system in many developed country. For these reasons, it is necessary to predict the field performance of asphalt mixes when selecting the bitumen (pure or modified). Therefore, in this study, 96 weather stations all over Iran were identified and selected for use in this research as having the most extensive set of data. High and low temperature of pavement is calculated according to the 96 available synoptic data of the past 20 years for Iran to determine suitable asphalt binder by using Super pave testing protocol (ASTM D6373). In order to achieve this purpose, we calculated minimum and maximum pavement temperature with consideration of 98% reliability. PGXXYY was calculated by using these two parameters for each city and Geographical zoning is made by GIS software use of Straight line method. the result shows bitumen produced in Iran is satisfactory (for climatic condition) on majority roads (covered 90 percent of result) and for retained PG, Polymers and some other additives can successfully improve the performance of asphalt pavements at low, intermediate and high temperature by increasing mixture resistance to fatigue cracking, thermal cracking and permanent deformation.