Many years have passed since the beginning of stone matrix asphalt’s (SMA’s) worldwide success. Therefore now the right moment has come to review all accessible information.
Through this new book I have tried to assemble, in an organized manner, a certain body of knowledge obtained from a vast number of publications the world over, thus providing a review of the achievements of numerous engineers from various countries working on bringing recognition to SMA and developing its design methods. I did my best to explain that knowledge and to present it in an accessible way. Some useful hints resulting from my experiences encountered during the introduction of SMA in the early 1990s, discussions with many process engineers, and later reflections and observations round out the theoretical deliberations.
Knowledge of SMA is steadily improving, and new test results are revealed every now and then. In light of this, the moment when we can say that we really “know everything” about it is still far away. Alas, there is not one foolproof method for obtaining a perfect SMA in this book. Moreover, I tend to think such a recipe does not exist at all. This is not necessarily a bad thing because there is nothing like the ability to think and imagine when designing a mixture. The information put into the text is intended to help with using SMA. The range of accessible literature is really broad, so its accumulation and explanation are almost like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Only the combination of many pieces of information enables associating certain relationships or finding out cause-and-effect relations. It is the reader’s task to judge whether that jigsaw puzzle has been appropriately completed.
Undoubtedly, the diversified terminology and the methods of testing properties of constituent materials and mixtures were quite a challenge when compiling this book.
Summing up this foreword, I feel that it should be emphasized again that the knowledge of this technology constitutes the considerable sum of experiences of many people. Therefore there is no particular individual who knows “everything” about SMA. In other words, no matter how much you already know about SMA, it is always worth broadening your knowledge!
Krzysztof Btazejowski
If it were not for the support of the many people who played a part in the publication of this book, it could not have been completed. I would like to express my deep gratitude to all who helped me, in particular:
Prof. Klaus-Werner Damm, Germany
Dr. Bohdan Doizycki, Poland
Lothar Druschner, Germany
Horst Erdlen, Germany
Klaus Graf, Germany
Jan P. Heczko, UK
Konrad Jablonski, Poland
Jiri Kaspar, the Czech Republic
Dr. Karol Kowalski, the United States and Poland
Janez Prosen, Slovenia
Gregor Rejewski, Germany
Halina Sarlinska, Poland
Marco Schunemann, Germany
Stanislaw Styk, Poland
Ewa Wilk, Poland
Kim Willoughby, the United States
Bartosz Wojczakowski, Poland
Jan M. Voskuilen, the Netherlands
Also, I wish to express my sincere appreciation to Dr. Rebecca McDaniel, Purdue University, United States, for the time she devoted to the review and for a number of valuable contributions and suggestions that have substantially enriched the book.
The undoubtedly difficult-to-translate text has been quite a challenge for Leszek Monko, Poland; and Murdo MacLeod, Scotland, who have been entrusted with its proofreading.
