Theory and Practice

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

Acknowledgments

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.

Updated: 10 ноября, 2015 — 11:49 пп