Effect of Aging on Chemical and Rheological Properties of Bitumen

Abstract

Engineering performance of asphalt pavement highly depends on the properties of bitumen, the bonding material to glue aggregates and fillers together. During the service period, bitumen is exposed to sunlight, oxygen and vehicle loading which in turn leads to aging and degradation. A comprehensive understanding of the aging mechanism of bitumen is of critical importance to enhance the durability of asphalt pavement. This study aims to determine the relations between micro-mechanics, chemical composition, and macro-mechanical behavior of aged bitumen. To this end, the effect of aging on micro-mechanics, chemical functional groups, and rheological properties of bitumen were evaluated by atomic force microscope, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and dynamic shear rheometer tests, respectively. Results indicated that aging obviously increased the micro-surface roughness of bitumen. A more discrete distribution of micromechanics on bitumen micro-surface was noticed and its elastic behavior became more significant. Aging also resulted in raised content of carbonyl, sulfoxide, and aromatic ring functional groups. In terms of rheological behavior, the storage modulus of bitumen apparently increased after aging due to the transformation of viscous fractions to elastic fractions, making it stiffer and less viscous. By correlation analysis, it is noted that the bitumen rheological behavior was closely related to its micro-mechanics.

Influence of Short-Term Aging on Mechanical Properties and Morphology of Polymer-Modified Bitumen with Recycled Plastics from Waste Materials

“…The aging of bituminous binder (including PMBs) once in the mixture is typically considered at two different stages, the so-called short-term aging and long-term aging [ 6 , 7 ], but very few studies focused so far on the aging mechanism of the PMBs at the production stage. The short-term aging of bituminous binders is mainly due to the volatilization of the lighter components during the production of mixtures at high temperature in an asphalt plant and during laying operation on site.…”

Enhanced Storage Stability of Different Polymer Modified Asphalt Binders through Nano-Montmorillonite Modification

“…With the extremely increasing loading and aggravation of axis load in the pavement industry, damages such as rutting, cracking etc., are happening more frequently on highways and urban roads [1][2][3][4]. Asphalt modification technology has been considered a practical approach to resolve these concerns by enhancing the durability of asphalt pavements.…”

Rheological, spectroscopic and microscopic assessment of asphalt binder ageing

“…Surface skewness (SSk), arithmetical mean roughness (Sa), root mean square roughness (Sq) and peak-to-peak (pk-pk) distance (height difference between the highest and lowest pixel in the image) provide crucial information on the surface qualities of materials and can supply information on the surface deformation evoked by the oxidative ageing. There were several studies published observing the roughness of asphalt binder surface with AFM (Yang et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2019). Virgin asphalt binder and modified binders were compared after various ageing cycle with AFM.…”