Evaluation of the cohesion of crumb rubber modified bitumens by means of UCL method

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the influence of crumb rubber on the improvement of cohesion provided by bitumen. The UCL Method is a procedure for binder characterization based on the evaluation of the degree of cohesion provided by a set amount of binder to an aggregate of a set grading (standard mixture). This method can be used to evaluate both, the dry and the wet adding procedures. The results obtained show that the wet procedure presents clear advantages over the dry procedure with and without digestion, especially when the binders are manufactured by microscopic dispersion.