Blends of bitumen with polymers having a styrene component

• Published in: Polymer engineering and science Vol. 41; no. 7; pp. 1251 - 1264
• Main Authors: Fawcett, A. H., McNally, T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company 01-07-2001; Wiley Subscription Services; Society of Plastics Engineers, Inc; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Bitumen. Tars. Bituminous binders and bituminous concretes; Bituminous materials; Blends; Buildings. Public works; Exact sciences and technology; Forms of application and semi-finished materials; Materials; Polymer industry, paints, wood; Polymers; Styrene; Technology of polymers; United Kingdom; SAN; SBR; Thermal transition; SBS; Experimental study; Bitumen; Binary mixture; ABS; Dynamic mechanical properties; High impact styrene polymer; Morphology; Styrene polymer; Comparative study
• DOI: 10.1002/pen.10826
• EISSN: 1548-2634
• ISSN: 0032-3888

The properties of a 100 penetration grade bitumen are modified considerably, and in a number of ways by the addition of 10 to 40 parts per hundred (pph) of a homopolystyrene and graft, block and random copolymers of styrene with butadiene and acrylonitrile. At low temperatures some blends have a similar stiffness to or even lower stiffness than the bitumen, but generally the blends are more than one order of magnitude stiffer, even when a rubber is added. The contrasting behavior is displayed by a polystyrene and a high impact polystyrene, ∼3% to 4% of grafted rubber on the latter being sufficient to cause the enhancement, even at the 10 pph level, by two different random styrene‐butadiene copolymers, and also by blends consisting of different amounts of SBS block copolymer. Some polymers apparently trigger a Hartley inversion of the micellar structure of the asphaltene micelles. High low temperature stiffness correlates roughly with a lower Tg' as measured by the peak maximum in the E″ plots of the dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA) and by the steps in the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) curves at temperatures below O°C. Tan δ maxima and DSC traces detected the glass transition in the continuous phase and in the dispersed phases, but none of these amorphous polymers formed a crystalline phase, though the DSC traces of the polystyrene and the SBS blends suggested that the polymer‐rich phases underwent an aging/ordering process on cooling. Our SBS blends differ in phase inversion behavior and the pattern of loss processes from others that had a smaller asphaltene component.