Identification Effect of Nanoclay on Engineering Properties of Asphalt Mixtures

Nanoclays are new generation of processed clays of interest in a wide range of high performancecomposites. in other words, nanoclay is defined as a clay that can be modified to make the clay complexescompatible with organic monomers and polymers. here, it can be said that the polymeric nanocomposites areamong the most exciting and promising classes of materials discovered recently. a number of physicalproperties are enhanced successfully when a polymer is modified with small amount of nanoclay oncondition that the clay is dispersed at nanoscopic level. this research has accomplished a comparativerheological test on binders as well as a mechanical test on asphalt mixtures containing unmodified andnanoclay modified bitumen. for that matter, two types of nanoclay were used: nanofil-l sand cloisite- jsa.while, the rheological test on binder were penetration, softening point, ductility and aging effect, mechanicaltest on asphalt mixture were marshal stability, indirect tensile strength, resilient modulus, diametric fatigueand dynamic creep test. test results show that, nanoclay can improve properties like stability, resilientmodulus and indirect tensile strength and possess better behavior compared with unmodified bitumen underdynamic creep although it does not seem to have beneficial effect on fatigue behavior in low temperature.optimum binder content and void in total mixture (vtm) increase by adding nanoclay to bitumen.