A study on the oxidation kinetics of warm mix asphalt Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2015 Elsevier B.V. Warm mix asphalt (WMA) is increasingly used in pavements to reduce energy consumption and emissions, and to extend workability times. Literature reports on warm mix asphalt have addressed its usage, but its oxidation kinetics and possible effects on pavement durability are unknown. In this work, several popular types of WMAs were used in multi-temperature experiments to estimate oxidation kinetics parameters of an Arrhenius reaction model. Additionally, an example pavement aging simulation explored the potential effects of differences in activation energy on pavement aging.Constant rate activation energies show statistically insignificant differences between the base binder and its WMAs; additionally, for each WMA material all four kinetics parameters follow the same correlations previously established for 15 non-WMA binders. These results suggest no adverse effect of WMA additives on asphalt oxidation, compared to the base binder. An example pavement binder oxidation simulation specific to Lubbock, Texas indicates that first, between a base binder and its corresponding WMAs, differences in pavement oxidation over 10 years of pavement service would be minimal and second, oxidative hardening may (or may not) slow the overall reaction rate as diffusion resistance increases, depending on the balance between diffusion and reaction rates.

published proceedings

  • CHEMICAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL

author list (cited authors)

  • Liu, G., & Glover, C. J.

citation count

  • 32

complete list of authors

  • Liu, Guanlan||Glover, Charles J

publication date

  • November 2015