Prediction of asphalt rheological properties using HP-GPC

Asphalt cement is a rheological material because its deformation characteri stics vary not only with load but also with rate of load application. The c hemical composition of asphalt cement affects its behavior. One of the meth ods that has been developed to study the molecular structure of materials i s high pressure-gel permeation chromatography CHP-GPC). In this paper, the possibility of using the HP-GPC chromatograms to predict asphalt rheologica l properties is evaluated. Mathematical models are generated to predict the rheological properties of asphalt cement based on its molecular size. In t he Gulf countries, there are currently four asphalt-producing refineries th at include Ras Tanura and Riyadh refineries in Saudi Arabia, Al-Ahmadi refi nery in Kuwait, and Bapco refinery in Bahrain. The asphalt produced by thos e refineries is referred to as "Arabian asphalt." For this study to be comp rehensive, it was decided to collect asphalt samples from all those refiner ies. Another set of polymer modified asphalt samples with 5, 10, and 15% cr umb rubber and 3, 6, and 9% styrene-butadiene-styrene was included in this study to evaluate the effect of polymer modification on the molecular size distribution of the asphalt samples.