Patent 7745518 was granted and assigned to Kraton (polymer) on June, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An asphalt binder is provided, comprising 85 to 97.5 parts by weight of a bitumen and 16 to 2.5 parts by weigh of a polymer composition, wherein the polymer composition comprises:(i) from 2 to 8, preferably from 3 to 6 parts by weight of a styrenic block copolymer having at least two blocks of monovinylaromatic hydrocarbon (A) and at least one block of a conjugated diene (B), wherein the block copolymer composition has a vinyl content of at least 25% by weight, preferably from 25 to 40% by weight, based on the total diene content;(ii) from 0 to 5, preferably from 1 to 3 parts by weight of a styrenic diblock copolymer having one block of monovinylaromatic hydrocarbon (A) and one block of a conjugated diene (B); and(iii) from 0.5 to 3, preferably from 1 to 2.5 parts by weight of an ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer,wherein the weight ratio of (i)+(ii):(iii) is from 2:1 to 6:1, preferably from 3:1 to 4:1. In addition, an asphalt mix is provided comprising 2 to 8 parts by weight of the asphalt binder of the present invention and 98 to 92 parts by weight of gap-graded aggregate or open-graded aggregate material.