Microstructural Changes in Bitumen at the onset of Damage-healing

Self-healing of bitumen is a property that positively contributes to the sustainability, maintenance requirements and cost effectiveness of asphalt pavements. Ideally one would like to design an asphalt mix with a well-defined healing potential. Although substantial research efforts have been dedicated to the healing mechanism in bitumen,...

Phase-Separation Characteristics of Bitumen and their Relation to Damage-Healing

During the service life of flexible asphalt pavements, asphalt concrete degrades due to traffic loading and environmental conditions like temperature, rain, oxidation, ultraviolet-radiation from the sun. All these environmental factors have adverse effects on the performance of bitumen, which is the binder of asphalt concrete. They are known to...

Understanding transport properties of geopolymer mortar using polarization and fluorescence microscopy

Application of TEM to characterize fly ash- and slag cements

A Portland fly ash cement containing 20% of a fine fly ash and a blast furnace slag cement of approximately 290 days old were examined with analytical transmission electron microscopy, in order to examine the (local) microstructure in these cements in detail. In the Portland fly ash cement the fly ash reacted with CH resulting from the cement...