Hydrogen sulfide poisoning from inhalation of roofing asphalt fumes is a rare but devastating injury. Two cases of toxic inhalation involving exposure to several gases, including hydrogen sulfide, evolved from cooling asphalt, are presented. Both victims were treated with supportive measures, including 100% normobaric oxygen, and one also received sodium nitrite. In one patient rapid, complete ...

Environmental and health aspects of road materials have been discussed for a long time, mostly regarding bitumen and bitumen fumes. However, just a few studies on other types of road materials have been reported. In this doctoral study, two types of materials, asphalt release agents and bituminous sealants, were investigated with regard to chemical characterization and emission profiles. Beside...

This work addresses the development and assessment of a fiber optical viscometer using a simple and low-cost long-period fiber grating (LPFG) level sensor and a capillary tube mechanism. Previous studies of optical viscosity sensors were conducted by using different optical sensing methods. The proposed optical viscometer consists of an LPFG sensor, a temperature-controlled chamber, and a cone-...

Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA), manufactured at a lower temperature than the traditional Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA), allows for important economic and environmental benefits when considered for application in roads. Nonetheless, despite the benefits, its application in pavement for roads is not as widespread as desired from an environmental point of view; more in-depth studies to investigate its development...

Preliminary notes In the course of court trials and for the purpose of legal proceedings, forensic engineers often produce estimations of the explosive mass based on the explosion effect using empirical formulas. This paper describes experimental surface explosions of variable mass of known explosive charge on the asphalt with the objective to make correlations between causes and consequences o...

Work in the asphalt industry has been associated with nonmalignant respiratory morbidity and mortality, but the evidence is not consistent. A historical cohort of asphalt workers included 58,862 men (911,209 person-years) first employed between 1913 and 1999 in companies applying and mixing asphalt in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, and Norway. The relations between ...

For many years, the asphalt industry has been aware of the energy savings and environmental benefits inherent in cold mix or warm mix asphalt technologies. Environmental awareness and the need for improved energy efficiency has increased rapidly over the past few years and extensive measures such as the air pollution reduction targets set by the European Union under the Kyoto Protocol have enco...

Asphalt has been modified for the past several decades using various additives, including synthetic polymers. Polymer modification improves structural and engineering characteristics of the binder, which is a result of improvement in rheological characteristics of binder as well as its adhesion capability with the aggregate. Such enhancement inevitably enhances the performance characteristics o...

The quality of hot mix asphalt is affected by the quality and consistency of input aggregates and the control of the production process. To improve the quality of hot mix asphalt, both the aggregates gradation and the process variables must be considered. Current practice involves taking samples from actual production and analyzing them in the lab. The entire process can take two hours, which, ...

Running is performed on different natural surfaces (outdoor) and artificial surfaces (indoor). Different surface characteristics cause modification of the lower leg muscle activation pattern to adopt ankle stiffness to these characteristics. So the purpose of our investigation was to study changes of lower leg muscles activation pattern in running on different natural running surfaces. Six male...