Robert N. Hunter ... 808 pages -
Publisher: ICE Publishing; 6th edition (December, 2014) ...
Language: English -
ISBN-10: 0727758373 -
ISBN-13: 978-0727758378 ...
The Shell Bitumen Handbook has been regarded for many years as the
authoritative source of information on bitumens used in road pavements.
This new edition seeks to enhance that reputation. For over a hundred
years Shell has been at the forefront of bitumen technology and
continues to lead in research and development. The Shell Bitumen
Handbook reflects this leading role. Compiled by authors from Shell
offices around the world, The Shell Bitumen Handbook provides global
best practice for civil engineers in pavement construction and
maintenance to apply to projects of their own, as well as comprehensive
theory for students and researchers. New to this edition, chapters
covering: warm asphalt mixtures; sulphur extended asphalt; sustainable
road pavements. Even in our internet age, there are some essential hard copy references
that have a place on the diminishing bookshelves of most practising
engineers and materials scientists. The distinctively yellow-bound Shell
Bitumen Handbook, first published in 1949 and now issued in its sixth
edition, is certainly one such valued book. It replaces the fifth
edition of 2003 and is completely reorganised, thoroughly updated and
expanded by around 50%. Three principal authors, led by civil engineer
and expert asphalt consultant, Dr Robert Hunter, are supported by a
panel of specialist authors, many of whom are with Shell Bitumen. Those
familiar with the fifth edition will find the chapters rearranged
somewhat, with a net increase in chapters from 20 to 24 and a doubling
of appendices from 4 to 8. The new chapter sequence approximately
follows the life of bitumen, from its origins and manufacture, through
its properties and use in asphalts, then design, installation and
performance of asphalt pavements, to durability and other applications
for bitumen and asphalt. Two of the new appendices indicate an objective
to make the handbook more international: Appendices 5 and 6,
respectively, list bitumen and asphalt product standards across the
world. In the former, different principles are used in various regions,
with performance graded (PG) specification being used in North America
and partly in China, whereas empirical testing is used elsewhere, such
as penetration/softening in Europe, Africa and much of Asia, and
viscosity in Australasia, the Indian subcontinent, Mexico and parts of
South America (and for soft grades in Europe); unfortunately, there is
some minor inconsistency between the text and the map in Appendix 5. A
surprising omission from the previous edition was guidance on the design
of asphalt mixtures. This gap is well and thoroughly addressed in the
new edition, with a completely new, 50-page Chapter 12. In common with
all the chapters in this book, Chapter 12 is clearly written and
beautifully presented, being both easy and a pleasure to read, supported
by full-colour diagrams of impressive clarity; there are no photographs
in this particular chapter, but elsewhere there are plenty of
good-quality images, as appropriate. This new chapter provides a
grounding in the principles that underpin asphalt mix design, notably
mixture volumetrics and aggregate grading , then explains the four most
widely implemented design methods, all of which were developed in the
USA: Hubbard Field , Hveem (or California ), Marshall (or Corps of
Engineers , perhaps the best known) and Superpave (the most recent,
resulting from a research programme initiated in response to increasing
premature pavement failures). As well as reorganisation and the new
chapter on asphalt mix design, existing users will be pleased to know
that this new edition sets out to update the whole opus, and two
splendid examples are the completely new Chapter 7 on rheology of
bitumens and the extended Chapter 8 (formerly Chapter 5) on
polymer-modified bitumens and other modified binders. The former is a
most valuable 30-page addition on a critical property, especially with
the growth in the use of polymer-modified bitumens, authored jointly by
specialists from Shell (Dr Richard Taylor) and the University of
Nottingham (Professor Gordon Airey). A potentially complex account of
the science of rheology is handled with skill and clarity, then the
rheological behaviour of bitumen is considered first in terms of a
low-temperature linear elastic region , then a high-temperature viscous
region and finally an intermediate temperature visco-elastic region.
