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Viscocel on the Road to the Coast
Date: 6 February 2003

Excel Fibre Technology’s Viscocel SMA Fibre has been used by Tarmac to manufacture the company’s ultra quiet Masterpave road surface for major resurfacing work on a section of the London and coast-bound carriageways of the M20, leading from the M25 to the Dover coast.

Masterpave was used to provide a hard-wearing surface to take the strain of heavy traffic travelling to and from one of Britain’s busiest ports, in a thin wearing course with a nominal depth of 35mm. It ensures a safe, even ride for passengers, providing a tough, durable road surface that also offers a high level of skid resistance and requires reduced maintenance.

Tarmac Limited’s National Contracting Division laid 15,000 tonnes of Masterpave on the five-mile stretch between junctions 10 and 11 on the M20.

Masterpave uses Excel’s Viscocel SMA Fibre to provide a high performance binder coating that holds the bitumen in the lattice during the laying process and prevents it draining away from the aggregate. Viscocel was selected for this critical function because of the evenness with which it enables the SMA to be laid, resulting in a super-smooth road surface and maximum noise reduction.

Its performance results from the engineered fibres created during its manufacturing process, which knit together better in the SMA mix, leading to less bitumen drainage and higher elasticity. Furthermore, the manufactured fibres are very ‘open’, meaning they are easily and evenly distributed in the SMA during the mixing process, thus producing an homogenous laid surface.

A further benefit of SMA surfaces manufactured using Viscocel SMA Fibre is that the performance criteria can be achieved with a very thin wearing course, thereby reducing costs and accelerating the speed with which the surface can be laid.

In the wet, the structure of the finished asphalt surface allows it to accommodate more water, which is held in the body of the material, rather than sitting on the surface. This produces less spray and reduces glare, which aids visibility. Road markings also become more visible, and the reduction in surface water reduces the risk of skidding or aquaplaning.

Independent testing of Viscocel by the most respected testing authorities in Europe and the USA have endorsed the fibre’s resistance to premature degradation, even when subjected to water and soil bacteria, and shown the material to be free from mould growth or swelling over the lifetime of a road.