Sustainable Development for Roads with Thin and Ultra Thin White Topping Overlays

In heavily populated metropolitan cities like Mumbai, keeping traffic on hold for a few days while repairing pavements with bitumen can be extremely frustrating for the enforcement agencies and the road users. Thin and ultra thin white topping can be suitable alternatives to bitumen to keep the traffic moving as they allow opening of the traffic lanes within 24 hours. A detailed look into the technology.

State-of-the-Art or Fit-for-Purpose

Adopting state-of-the-art techniques just for personal vanity or CV building is likely to backfire in developing economies like India. India has quite different baseline conditions from western cities, more than simple quantitative differences in income levels and a different vehicle mix. Such differences must be borne in mind when determining ways to analyse the transport patterns for new transport infrastructure and policies, writes Richard Di Bona.

Selecting and using Modified Bituminous Binders In India

The current specifications and guidelines for the selection and use of different types of modified binders such as polymer modified bitumen and crumb rubber modified bitumen are inadequate. Prof Prithvi Singh Kandhal, Associate Director Emeritus of the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT), Auburn University, Alabama, USA argues that there is an immediate need to revise government policies by deleting the common specification table for all types of polymers and modifiers so that substandard PMB is not used in India. He also writes very interestingly on the journey of various types of bitumen