The present invention relates to new acrylic copolymers which can be used for coating bituminous materials.
Bituminous materials are well known as sealing products in the building and civil engineering industry, in which they are employed especially for sealing mineral surfaces and metal components subjected to moisture, such as terraces, pipelines and offshore structures. They are also well known in the public works industry in the form of asphalt mixes which are spread on roads, roadways, runways and the like. A well-known disadvantage of bituminous materials in these various applications consists of the difficulty in coating them with a paint or with a coating capable of preventing them from degrading under the action of solar radiation and of modifying their aesthetic appearance, and in particular one capable of replacing their black color with a lighter color of the user's choice. In many fields of architecture and in particular in the decoration of buildings this disadvantage has resulted in bituminous materials being replaced with other sealing products which are more costly but whose aesthetic appearance can be modified without difficulty. In the field of public works a well-known application of the painting of bituminous materials consists of the marking coatings for protected pedestrian passages placed across roadways. In this application the difficulties of adhesion of the paint to the bituminous material, especially with the combined action of inclement weather and of vehicular traffic, result in the very frequent necessity of reapplication of these marking coatings.