Abstract
The storage stability concern, caused by phase separation for the density difference between polymers and asphalt fractions, has limited the widespread application of polymer modified asphalt (PMA). Therefore, this study aims to improve the storage concern of PMA by incorporating nano-montmorillonite. To this end, different nano-montmorillonites were incorporated to three PMAs modified with three typical asphalt modifiers, i.e., crumb rubber (CRM), styrene–butadiene-rubber (SBR) and styrene–butadiene-styrene (SBS). A series of laboratory tests were performed to evaluate the storage stability and rheological properties of PMA binders with nano-montmorillonite. As a consequence, the incorporation of nano-montmorillonite exhibited a remarkable effect on enhancing the storage stability of the CRM modified binder, but limited positive effects for the SBR and SBS modified binders. The layered nano-montmorillonite transformed to intercalated or exfoliated structures after interaction with asphalt fractions, providing superior storage stability. Among selected nano-montmorillonites, the pure montmorillonite with Hydroxyl organic ammonium performed the best on enhancing storage stability of PMA. This paper suggests that nano-montmorillonite is a promising modifier to alleviate the storage stability concern for asphalt with polymer modifiers.
Highlights
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]
It is noted that the polymer-modified asphalts had a higher softening point and a lower penetration, which indicates that the incorporation of Crumb rubber (CRM)/SBR/SBS led to superior performance at high temperature and higher stiffness respectively
It is observed that the incorporation of nano-montmorillonite further decreased the penetration of SBS-0, while had insignificant effect on CRM-0 and SBR-0
Summary
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]. Vargas et al, [18] discovered that Organo-nanocomposite modified-asphalt can generate an intercalated structure using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) This indicates that the enhanced rheological properties may ascribe to the interaction behavior of the polymer chains in asphalt binder into the interlayer of clay. The objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of alleviating the storage stability concern of polymer-modified asphalt by incorporating nano-montmorillonite To this end, three different types of nano-montmorillonites and three types of modifiers, i.e., CRM, SBR and SBS, were selected to prepare NPMAs. The rheological tests were performed to evaluate mechanical properties of NPMA binders when applied to pavement industry, among which the Superpave rutting factor test was chosen to control the content of these three modifiers.
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