Elvaloy RET Improving Pavement Performance

- January 01, 2016 -

The asphalt modifier, Dow™ Elvaloy® RET, creates a permanently improved bitumen-based binder that delivers long-lasting performance in well-engineered pavements.

Pavement design projects best suited to using Dow™ Elvaloy® RET typically involve broader temperature swings, heavier wheel loads, or more critical links in the transportation infrastructure. Wherever longer-lasting pavement, or greater smoothness and traction safety is needed (such as at intersections).

Using Elvaloy® RET results in a binder with better-engineered resilience, less stripping, less cracking, and often higher total value from extended service life and reduced or postponed need to disprupt traffic or create business hardships to fix premature pavement failures.

BY PAVEMENT TYPE

Smoother, Longer-Lasting Airport Runways
In Mexico, Russia and the Czech Republic, runways, taxiways and related pavements have been built using Elvaloy® RET.
PMA Used on Runway Pavement at Culiacan Airport Handles International Traffic

Expressways in Growing Economies
Key highways around the world are handling commercial and automobile traffic better and longer thanks to improved binder performance.
Prague Bypass with Elvaloy

Reducing the Strain on Intersections
With Elvaloy® RET, asphalt paving stays smoother and safer at intersections, where the forces that cause rutting are often greatest.
Resisting Ruts and Intersecting Roads

Resisting Damage from Fuels and Heavy Loadings
Elvaloy® RET asphalt modifier creates a better binder at the molecular level, which helps make pavements more resistant to fuels and deformation.
Heavy Truck Pavement Project

IMPROVING ASPHALT PROPERTIES BY GEOGRAPHY OR CLIMATE RANGE:

Around the world, engineers and contractors typically want to maximize asphalt properties to meet local conditions.

Testing Local Asphalt Properties
Base asphalt properties vary from source to source. Local binder suppliers can pre-test their base asphalt in a lab setting, to determine optimum addition rates for Elvaloy® RET. After modification, the new binder will typically meet higher performance specs.
Testing local asphalt

Reduced Rutting in Hot Climates
India's GVK Desert Zone Expressway
GVK Expressway (Jaipur to Kishangarh) in the State of Rajasthan is located in a high-temperature desert zone, with sections subject to heavy traffic.

A Key Brasil Transportation Corridor
Rodovia Anhangüera (SP-330), a 4-lane toll highway, connects São Paulo with the state's hotter northern areas.

Reducing Cold Cracking
Fighting the Freeze in Russia A landing strip, ramp, taxiways and a drainage system were reconstructed using RET at Magadan Airport.

Challenging Canadian Winters
Pavements made with different modifiers were tested side-by-side in Timmins, Ontario, where winter temperatures reached 50-year lows.
Fighting the causes of pavement cracks

Managing Hot-Cold Range Extremes
Outlasting Others in a High Desert Climate
Oregon \"high desert\" highway sections built in 1991 using Elvaloy® RET outlasted all other modified binder sections, in a service environment marked by heavy truck traffic and severe temperature cycles.

Montana Maintenance Costs Reduced
Project engineers wanted all the temperature range they could get, to fight cracking and rutting with a better-built pavement.
Montana Highway 83