The Rheological and Fatigue Properties of Waste Acetate Fiber-Modified Bitumen

The rheological properties of fiber-reinforced binders are remarkable. The research on acetate fibers as reinforcing agents is scant. Acetate fibers exhibit more environmental benefits than lignocellulose and other fibers. In this study, acetate fibers were pretreated with anhydrous ethanol as the extractant to disperse the fibers uniformly in the bitumen and the high/medium-temperature fatigue properties of waste acetate fibers blended with binders were investigated. Infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) tests showed that pretreatment was effective in removing plasticizers from CBs so that the fibers could be more uniformly dispersed in the binders. The roadworthiness and fatigue performance of the adhesives were tested based on frequency sweep (FS), multiple stress creep recovery (MSCR), and linear amplitude sweep (LAS) tests with different CB (cigarette butt) doping levels. Ultimately, CBs were added to effectively improve all aspects of bitumen performance, but this phenomenon was not enhanced with an increase in the amount of admixture-optimal covariance was 0.25%. Moreover, a further correlation analysis was performed for the three traditional predicted fatigue failure points. The best correlation was R² = 0.98 for a 50% decrease in dynamic shear modulus, followed by R² = 0.96 for peak stress-strain, and R² = 0.88 for fatigue factor.