Developments of road marking paint in China

Road marking paint development contributes great in progress of road construction in china. But there are still some problems in this new technology application .

Most roads in China have no marking lines before 1980s. In some road with making lines, 90% of the road marking paint is Normal temperature solvent-based dry paint , with short service life (about half a year or so), and weak visual confirmation feeling. While in the developed countries, 90% of the road marking paint is thermoplastic reflective paint. Since the 1990 s, the country had used the thermoplastic reflective road reticule coating for the first time in highway road marking, won a very good effect. Then after many years of research and exploration,  thermoplastic reflective paint has been widely applied in road traffic projects. This paint is thermoplastic, must heat to melt , then added with coated glass bead to realize the effect of reflecting light before use. With the opening and reform and the development of science and technology, in the 20th century a new type of road reflect light paint attracted great attention, that is vibration reflective road marking paint. But it was rarely applied because of its high price. And, at the beginning it was imported from Japan, only used as signs for slow down. When traffic running on the vibration reflective lines, the bumps of the paint generates vibration and gives the driver a sign to slow down.

Until the 21st century, there are a lot of manufacturers in China began to develop and research in this paint, and start to product, and then China began extensive use of it in the highway.In recent years, with China's rapid development of road construction, each year, investment capital in transportation construction of was more than 200 billion Chinese dollar, as high as 390 billion in 2003, of which, 350 billion was invested in highway construction. By the end of year 2003, the road mileage was up to 1.81 million km, was the fourth in the world. The highway mileage reached a total of nearly 30,000 km, leaps to the world's second place behind the United States.

The road traffic line, as the lifeblood of the control and guidance of the road traffic, the number of system to delimit and mark is very big, the consumption of road traffic line paint soared, estimated roughly, every year 150000 tons for maintenance and new construction of road. However, because of the reasons of the quality of construction, there are also some problems and dissatisfaction of the thermoplastic paint. First, single species, can’t choose reasonably, to cause waste. Second , unsuitable use of reflective glass bead, makes the effect of the reflective road line not good. Third, ignoring of the performance of preventing sliding makes the road marking lines hidden danger for vehicles skid and drift accident.