Cold mix asphalt: An overview

Global warming is one of the biggest challenges that we are facing today. Construction industry is also contributing to the problem by emitting greenhouse gases. In order to deal with this issue sustainable products are being adopted by all the industries. Similarly, highway industry is also adopting several measures to reduce its carbon footprint. One of such measures is cold mix asphalt technology (CMA). CMA does not require any heating of material. This is achieved by using asphalt emulsion and cutback as binding material. Since these materials are liquid at room temperature, they do not require any heating for mixing and compaction. This gives many environmental and economic benefits to CMA over hot mix asphalt (HMA). Despite having these advantages, inferior performance makes CMA undesirable to be used in the construction of roads having high density traffic. Although some studies have been taken to improve the performance of CMA but those are limited in their scope. Present paper gives an overview of the different aspects of CMA technology. It discusses materials, design procedure, field utilisation, performance, effect of different performance enhancing measures of CMA. In the end benefits, drawbacks and future scope of CMA are also presented.