Laying asphalt pavement is usually associated with a large amount of construction work and involves significant costs to the customer. It is in this case that it is necessary to make a detailed calculation of asphalt consumption per 1 m 2 . This must be done in order to exclude overpayment for unnecessary volumes of building material and to prevent inflation of estimates.
But before proceeding with such calculations, you need to get general information about asphalt and find out the possibilities of its application.
Asphalt is a combination of bitumen, petroleum products and a small amount of mineral raw materials of viscous resinous quality, produced in a natural or artificial way. In asphalt of natural origin, part of the bitumen will fluctuate within 60-75%, while artificial bitumen contains only 15% of the total volume and reaches a maximum of 60%.
Asphalt application
In everyday life, asphalt is primarily understood as pavement, while it has the purpose of a bonding building material. Thanks to this, asphalt is also used as building putty, glue, roofing and even paint and varnish building materials. But still, the main consumption of artificial and natural asphalt remains in the orbit of road construction, where the asphalt consumption per 1m 2 of asphalt will be calculated.
Determination of asphalt consumption
Any work on laying the roadway is determined by GOSTs. But there are major factors affecting asphalt consumption. These include:
- The size of the plot.
- The thickness of the coating layer.
- The structure of the bearing and final surface.
It is still necessary to choose the optimal
asphalt mix, depending on the area of its use and affecting the asphalt consumption per 1 m
2 . There are such types of mixtures:
- Hot, warm or cold.
- Sandy, fine-grained, coarse-grained.
- Dense, porous, highly porous.
Mixture Classification
Natural asphalt is a resinous rock and is formed naturally from heavy fractions of petroleum origin as a result of oil oxidation. In fact, this product is obtained in the process of converting oil to soft bitumen.
If in essence natural asphalt is fossil, then artificial asphalt is obtained as a result of oil distillation. This building material is used to prepare the following asphalt mixtures:
- Hot from viscous bitumen with a laying temperature of 120 ° C (they are the most high-quality and wear-resistant).
- Warm based on low-viscosity bitumen with laying at a temperature of 40-80 .
- Cold based on liquid bitumen with compaction and laying at a temperature of at least -5 ° C. Humid weather during work is allowed. The traffic opens almost immediately upon completion of work. They are characterized by high compaction even at low temperatures and allow to extend the construction season. Effective in autumn, winter and spring.
Asphalt mixes are divided into:
- Sand (used for filling cracks in the coating, patching and waterproofing. Grain size of at least 10 mm).
- Fine-grained (used for laying the upper layers of the canvas or leveling it. Grains of at least 20 mm).
- Coarse-grained (for laying the lower layers of the coating. The grain size is not more than 40 mm).
Characteristics of asphalt mixtures in terms of porosity:
- Dense (used for the top coating of the road part due to its high strength, wear resistance, roughness and dustlessness).
- Porous and highly porous (used in the lower layers of the road to ensure resistance to stress).
Depending on the intended operating mode of the road section, the thickness of the base and the number of layers of asphalt pavement are selected. In case of such insignificant loads as pedestrian or occasional movement of cars, it is quite possible to limit oneself to a base up to 15 cm thick and a single-layer coating of 4-5 cm. But if constant movement of heavy freight transport is expected (industrial areas, gas stations, etc.) , then the base should be at least 25-35 cm with 2-3 layers of asphalt.
Having decided on the asphalt mixture, you can proceed to the calculation of asphalt consumption.
Calculation of asphalt consumption
On average, the use of hot asphalt per 1 m 2 of asphalt of a roadbed with a thickness of 1 cm is 25 kg / m 2 and varies based on the above characteristics of the asphalt mix.
The consumption of cold asphalt per 1 m 2 is about four times higher than hot, but it also gives the above advantages.
But in order to make a direct calculation, it is necessary to take into account the size of the laying area, the thickness of the coating layer and the type of mixture determined by the purpose of the coating.
As a result, if it is planned to lay asphalt 5 cm thick in one layer, then 125 kg of asphalt per 1 square meter of asphalt road will be required.
This article provides an approximate calculation of asphalt consumption per 1 m 2 of asphalt. To accurately calculate the amount of material used and draw up a detailed estimate, you need to invite a specialist to the place of work.