Road surfacing materials

Abstract

A road surfacing material consisting of binder and aggregate. The aggregate used is a blend of materials having differing rates of wear, each having a surface micro-texture in the range defined by asperity heights of a minimum texture depth of 5 microns and maximum texture depth of 500 microns.

Having now described our invention, what we claim is: 
     
       1. A road surfacing material comprising a blend of at least two aggregates of graded sizes up to not more than 11/2 inches disposed in a binder matrix and having different rates of wear as judged by the aggregate test BS 812 1967, the particles of each of said two aggregates exposed to the surface falling within different size ranges, the slower wearing aggregate comprising one portion of particles of larger size and another portion of particles of smaller size than any of the particles of the faster wearing aggregate .Iadd., and each of said two aggregates having a surface micro-texture defined by asperity heights in the range of 5 to 500 microns.Iaddend..   
     
     
       2. A road surfacing material according to claim 1 in which the aggregates are blended so that the constituent with the higher rate of wear comprises the middle sizes of the aggregate grading. 
     
     
       3. A road surfacing material according to claim 1 in which the faster wearing aggregate is a gritstond. 
     
     
       4. A road surfacing material according to claim 1 in which the surface micro-structure of at least some of said aggregate approximates to an idealized micro-texture containing cones of half-angle between 30° and 75° .[.of height between 5 microns and 500 microns and.]. arranged in a continuous close-packing arrangement. 
     
     
       5. A road surfacing material according to claim 1 in which the faster wearing aggregate wears at a rate at least 1.3 times faster than the other.