Towards Failure Mechanism of Hot Melt Road Marking Coatings

Road markings, as one of the important traffic ancillary facilities, play a significant role in traffic safety. The installation of road markings inevitably requires a large amount of marking paint. However, the visibility and durability of current road marking paints are unable to meet the requirements of the modern development of the transportation industry. Since road marking construction units only focus on whether the initial performance of the marking paint meets the requirements, without considering the mechanism of the paint's performance changes during use, the visibility and durability of the markings decrease rapidly after a period. In this context, based on the optimal formulation scheme of the marking paint, this study prepares paint samples, designs a marking wear test, and combines Scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis to investigate the reasons for the decline in the wear resistance and luminance factor of the marking paint. By observing the microscopic morphology of the surface of the marking paint samples at different wear stages, it is concluded that the quality of glass beads themselves and the adhesion between glass beads and surrounding fillers are the main causes of marking paint failure. The obtained failure mechanism provides corresponding experimental plans and results for further development of high-performance coatings.