Paper Number
FC11 

Session
Flow Assurance of Crude Oil & Derivatives

Title
Microstructure and rheological characteristics of asphalt binders

Presentation Date and Time
October 15, 2018 (Monday) 4:10

Track / Room
Track 2 / Plaza I

Authors (Click on name to view author profile)

1. Shan, Liyan (Harbin Institute of Technology, School of Transportation Science and Engineering)
2. Wagner, Norman J. (University of Delaware)
3. Li, Zhuang (Harbin Institute of Technology, School of Transportation Science and Engineering)
4. He, Hongsen (Harbin Institute of Technology, School of Transportation Science and Engineering)
5. Xie, Ru (University of Delaware)

Author and Affiliation Lines (in printed abstract book)
Liyan Shan¹, Norman J. Wagner², Zhuang Li¹, Hongsen He¹, and Ru Xie^2
1School of Transportation Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China; ²University of Delaware, Newark, DE

Speaker / Presenter 
Shan, Liyan

Text of Abstract
Asphalt binder is an important component used in pavement. The microstructure and rheological characteristics of it are critical to pavement performance, hence they are the focus of much research in the past few decades. However, the microstructure of asphalt binders and how this is coupled to its rheological behavior is still not clear. Furthermore, most of the rheology research focuses on the linear rheological behavior rather than the nonlinear rheological behavior that may be associated with performance and failure of asphalt. The literature shows that SANS is an effective tool to reveal the nanoscale microstructure, and LAOS is useful to study the nonlinear rheological behavior of colloidal materials. To address the need for improvements in structure-property relationships in the field of asphalt research, the microstructure and nonlinear rheological behavior of asphalt binders were studied using SANS and LAOS. We studied five different kinds of asphalt binders and one type of SBS modifier using SANS. The results reveal the microstructure of asphalt binders and SBS polymer changing with temperatures. It also provides further evidence for colloid structure of asphalt binder and mechanism of SBS modification. The LAOS stress rheological response of both a neat bitumen and a modified bitumen are analyzed by FT-rheology and strain decomposition to an orthogonal set of Chebyshev polynomials. We find that the relative nonlinearity of bitumen increases with increase in stress and decrease in frequency; the intrinsic nonlinearity Q0 decreases with increase in frequency and decrease in temperature. Bitumen A exhibits stress softening and stress thinning under all the studied test conditions, but bitumen B exhibits stress stiffening under some conditions. The structure-property relationships for asphalt binders were studied by comparing the SANS and LAOS results. The results show that the microstructure of asphalt binder affects the rheological behavior of asphalt binder, especially the modifier in the asphalt.