Study on the Ageing Behavior of South American Bitumen

In Suriname, located at the north east part of South America, only one type of bitumen is available for road construction. This bitumen, a pen grade bitumen 60/70 is produced by the Surinam refinery Staatsolie. The crude is always of the same origin. Based on the climatic conditions, it is presumed that ageing of bitumen is often the cause of premature damage in different types of roads, such as fatigue and alligator cracks, raveling and potholes. To obtain insight to which extent the ageing behavior of the bitumen provides an explanation for the premature failure, extensive research has been conducted on bitumen recovered from three premature damaged road sections. The degree of short term ageing was first examined by means of empirical bitumen test methods, rheological characterization, FTIR analysis and GPC measurements. After this an attempt was made to mimic the observed long term field ageing using the RCAT method. This paper reports on the research carried out on field aged and RCAT artificially aged bitumen and the relationship between field and artificially aged bitumen.