Rheological and chemical characterization of multi-source bitumen:A first step toward an alternative evaluation procedure of paving binders

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Volume Title

Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis

Date

2022-12-12

Department

Major/Subject

Highway Engineering

Mcode

Degree programme

Master's Programme in Geoengineering (GEO)

Language

en

Pages

67+0

Series

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyze the rheological and chemical characteristics of a wide range of bitumen as part of the Morebit Project. Before 2020, Finland benefited from a stable bitumen supply with consistently similar product properties. After 2020, the Finnish market has been open to many bitumen suppliers. With the increase in the diversity of materials, industry faces new challenges in identifying the properties of bitumen from various sources. Finland has low temperatures during wintertime and relatively high temperature during summertime, exposing the road pavements to a large operating temperature regime. Asphalt behaves differently with respect to temperature; therefore, it is essential to analyze the properties of the bitumen as this provides an indication of their performance when used to prepare asphalt mixtures. Seven bitumen supply companies joined the Morebit project along with the Finnish Transport Agency to evaluate the performance of the bitumen currently coming to Finland for paving applications. This thesis has analyzed 16 samples with various grades. Bitumen have been tested with the Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR), including temperature frequency sweep tests, Multiple Stress Creep Recovery (MSCR), and Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The samples have been used in this analysis as fresh and short-term aged to simulate the aging conditions during the mixing and transportation of the bitumen. A series of parameters were derived from the master curve, MSCR, and FTIR to identify the properties of the bitumen. Promising parameters were identified to discriminate the same penetration -graded bitumen from different suppliers. This work represents the first step in the attempt to develop an alternative experimental method to rapidly evaluate bituminous binders.

Description

Supervisor

Cannone Falchetto, Augusto

Thesis advisor

Wang, Di

Keywords

rheology, DSR, MSCR, FTIR, aging

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