Construction and Building Materials 80 (2015) 195–199

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Construction and Building Materials

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat

Laboratory investigation of dynamic rheological properties of tourmaline

modified bitumen
Chaohui Wang a,⇑, Peng Wang a, Yanwei Li b, Yongzhen Zhao b
a
Key Laboratory of Road Structure and Materials of Ministry of Transportation of People’s Republic of China, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China
b
Bureau of Transportation in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China

h i g h l i g h t s

 The rutting resistance of bitumen is improved by the tourmaline.

 The tourmaline plays as a hardening agent in bitumen.
 The elasticity of bitumen is improved by tourmaline.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Tourmaline modified bitumen was prepared by blending base bitumen with tourmaline powder. Effect of
Received 3 August 2012 temperature, frequency as well as the content of tourmaline powder on the complex modulus and phase
Received in revised form 23 November 2014 angle of the bitumen was investigated by dynamic shear rheometer (DSR). The results indicate that the
Accepted 27 December 2014
complex modulus decreased whereas the phase angle increased with the increasing of temperature and
frequency, the complex modulus of modified bitumen exhibit good linear relationship with the logarith-
mic value of loading frequency. Compared with base bitumen, the bitumen containing tourmaline pow-
Keywords:
der exhibit higher rutting factor, indicating that the rutting resistance of bitumen at high temperature
Modified bitumen
Tourmaline
was improved by tourmaline, for the rigidity of bitumen was enhanced by tourmaline.
Rheological properties Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Rigidity

1. Introduction
With developing of low-carbon economy, the construction of
low-carbon society has become the strategy emphasis of the world.
In the road engineering, hot-mix bitumen mixture has been widely
used for high-grade pavement, which has lots of disadvantage such
as wasting energy, exhausting waste gas as well as causing other
environmental pollution problems [1,2]. In 1995, people developed
the warm-mix bitumen (WMA), which could decrease the dis-
charge of waste gas and save energy by reducing the mixing tem-
perature, but its road property cannot approach to the same level
as the hot-mix bitumen [3,4].
Most of environmental modified bitumens are prepared by add-
ing some functional materials into bitumen, and the function
mainly attributes to the addictives. Among the inorganic additives,
hydrated lime (HL) has been known as an additive for asphalt mix-
tures. It attracted a strong interest during the 1970s in the USA.
Diatomaceous earth and montmorillonoid are also a hot research
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +86 29 82334836.
E-mail address: wangzhaohui0201@126.com (C. Wang).
topic in recent years [5–10], but study about tourmaline is very
few.
Tourmaline is a kind of inorganic material, which is of the func-
tions of piezoelectricity, pyroelectricity, permanent spontaneous
polarization, far infrared emission, water electrolysis, anion releas-
ing [11–15]. The bitumen modified by tourmaline exhibits many
new special low-carbon functions such as adsorbing dust and poi-
sonous gas, saving energy and reducing the amount of smoke emis-
sion during the process of hot-mixing due to its functions of
piezoelectricity, pyroelectricity and permanent spontaneous polar-
ization. The application of tourmaline modified bitumen also can
improve the environment, which attributes to the effect of tourma-
line on air purification. Part of the thermal and mechanical energy
stored in pavement can be converted into electrical energy, under
the influence of the piezoelectricity and pyroelectricity of tourma-
line, so the damage of vehicle load on pavement may be obviously
reduced, and the service life of road is extended, meanwhile, the
pavement temperature can be availably decreased, which will alle-
viate the urban heat island effect [16,17].
In this paper, tourmaline modified bitumen was prepared by
blending base bitumen with tourmaline powder. Effect of

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2014.12.105
0950-0618/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
196 C. Wang et al. / Construction and Building Materials 80 (2015) 195–199

Table 1 2.2. Preparation of tourmaline modified bitumen

Physical properties of SK70.
The modified bitumen was prepared using a high shear mixer. Bitumen heated
Physical properties Measured values to 150 ± 5 and tourmaline were poured into the mixer, the mixture was initially
Penetration (25 °C, 100 g, 5 s, 0.1 mm) 71 blended using a high shear mixer at a rotate speed of 1000 rpm for 10 min, and then
Ductility (5 cm/min, 10 °C) (cm) 15 the mixture was continuously blended at a rotation speed of 4000 rpm for 40 min,
Softening point (°C) 45.7 finally, the mixture was blended at the rotation speed of 1000 rpm for 10 min.
Density (g/cm3) 1.025
Solubility (trichloroethylene) (%) 99.7 2.3. Rheogical properties testing
RTFOT (163 °C, 85 min) 0.02
Mass loss (%) Dynamic rheological properties of the base and tourmaline modified bitumens
were measured by DSR (MCR101, Anton Paar Company, USA). Frequency sweep test
was carried out from 0.1 rad/s to 10 rad/s. The testing temperatures were set at
64 °C, 70 °C, 76 °C and 80 °C, respectively. The plate used for frequency sweep test
Table 2 was 8 mm in diameter and the gap between the parallel plates was 2 mm.
Properties of tourmaline powder.

Colour Appearance Hardness Density Particle size Purity 3. Results and discussion
(g/cm3) (meshe numbers)
White Powder 7 1.23 5000 99.2% 3.1. Effect of frequency on the complex modulus and phase angle of
tourmaline modified bitumen

The relationship between the complex modulus of tourmaline

temperature, frequency as well as the content of tourmaline pow-
der on the complex modulus and phase angle of the bitumen was
investigated by dynamic shear rheometer (DSR).
2. Experimental
2.1. Materials
Bitumen, SK70 pave bitumen, supplied by SK Petroleum Bitumen Factory,
Southern Korea, its physical properties was listed in Table 1. Tourmaline, supplied
by Lingshou stone factory in Hebei Province, China, its properties was listed in
Table 2.
modified bitumen and loading frequency was shown in Fig. 1.
As could be seen in Fig. 2, the complex modulus of modified
bitumen increased along with the increasing of loading frequency,
there was a good linear relationship between the logarithmic value
of complex modulus G⁄ and logarithmic value of loading frequency.
The reason for this phenomenon was that bitumen material was a
kind of visco-elastic materials, and its deformation generally
included elastic deformation, renewable viscoelastic deformation
and irreversible viscous deformation. The greater loading
frequency was, the shorter time for external load contacted with
bitumen, and then the complex modulus was increased. On the

Fig. 1. Effect of loading frequency on complex modulus at different temperature.

 C. Wang et al. / Construction and Building Materials 80 (2015) 195–199 197

Fig. 2. Effect of loading frequency on phase angle at different temperature.

Fig. 3. Effect of tourmaline content on complex modulus and phase angle of bitumen.

contrary, in the low frequency, the deformation of bitumen mate-
rial would be increased with the contact time becoming longer,
therefore the modulus was decreased. The effect of loading fre-
quency on complex modulus performed more obviously at high
temperature, the value of G⁄ would magnify about one order of
magnitude in 70 when the frequency range increased from 1 rad/
s to 10 rad/s.
Fig. 2 reveals the relationship between phase angle of
tourmaline modified bitumen and loading frequency (under the
temperature of 64 °C, 70 °C, 76 °C and 82 °C). As shown in
Fig. 2(a) and (b), with the rising of loading frequency, the propor-
tion of elastic deformation was increased, which making the phase
angle of tourmaline modified bitumen declining with the increas-
ing of loading frequency under the temperature of 64 °C and
70 °C. How, when the temperature increased to 76 °C and 82 °C,
respectively, as shown in Fig. 3(c) and (d), there was an increasing
trend of phase angle with the rising of loading frequency. This
could be explained as that the bitumen material was close to
198 C. Wang et al. / Construction and Building Materials 80 (2015) 195–199
Fig. 4. Complex modulus and phase angle of the bitumen under different temperature.
Fig. 5. Effect of tourmaline content on rutting factor G⁄/sin d of bitumen.
viscosity fluid under high temperature, effect of loading frequency
on elastic component would be weakened, and phase angle
increased.
3.2. Complex modulus and phase angle of bitumen with different
contents of tourmaline
Fig. 3 showed the relationship between the value of complex
modulus as well as phase angle and the tourmaline content.
Compared with base bitumen, the value of complex modulus of
tourmaline modified bitumen was obviously bigger and the value
of phase angle d was much smaller. With the rising amount of tour-
maline, the value of complex modulus of tourmaline modified bitu-
men became bigger, and the value of phase angle became smaller,
which contributed to a higher rutting resistance of bitumen due to
the rigidity enhancing of bitumen induced by tourmaline.
3.3. Effect of temperature on the complex modulus and phase angle of
tourmaline modified bitumen
Fig. 4 reveals the complex modulus (G⁄) and phase angle (d) of
tourmaline modified bitumen under different temperature. It can
be found from Fig. 1 that with the rising of temperature, the com-
plex modulus decreased whereas the phase angle increased, which
indicates that the elastic components was reduced whereas the
viscous components was increased with the temperature rising,
it can be explained as that the free volume of bitumen would be
magnified when the temperature rising up, and the high elastic
state of bitumen at low temperature was transformed into the
viscous flow state at high temperature, making shear stress of
bitumen become smaller and shear strain become bigger, therefore
the value of complex modulus decreased and the phase angle
increased with the temperature rising.
3.4. Rutting resistance of tourmaline modified bitumen
Fig. 5 shows the rutting factor of modified bitumen with differ-
ent tourmaline content. It could be seen from Fig. 5 that the rutting
factor of tourmaline modified bitumen declined with the tempera-
ture varying from 64 °C to 82 °C, which indicated that the property
of rutting resistance of bitumen at high temperature decreased.
It can be also found from Fig. 5 that the rutting factor of the
bitumen containing tourmaline powder was higher than the bitu-
men without tourmaline powder, which indicates that the rutting
resistance of bitumen at high temperature was improved by tour-
maline. However, the rutting factor of 20 wt% tourmaline modified
bitumen was nearly the same as the rutting factor of 20 wt% tour-
maline modified bitumen, indicating that the influence of tourma-
line on the rutting resistance of bitumen at high temperature of
bitumen was definite when its content was more than 14 wt%.
4. Conclusions
Tourmaline modified bitumen was prepared by blending base
bitumen with tourmaline powder. Effect of temperature, frequency
as well as the content of tourmaline powder on the complex mod-
ulus and phase angle of the bitumen was investigated by dynamic
shear rheometer (DSR), the results indicate that:
(1) The complex modulus decreased whereas the phase angle
increased with the rising of temperature, it can be explained
as that the free volume of bitumen would be magnified
when the temperature rising up, and the high elastic state
of bitumen at low temperature was transformed into the
viscous flow state at high temperature.
 C. Wang et al. / Construction and Building Materials 80 (2015) 195–199
(2) The complex modulus of modified bitumen increased with
the increasing of loading frequency, there was a good linear
relationship between the logarithmic value of complex mod-
ulus G⁄ and logarithmic value of loading frequency. The
effect of loading frequency on complex modulus performed
more obvious at high temperature, the value of G⁄ would
magnify about one order of magnitude in 70 °C when the
frequency range increased from 1 rad/s to 10 rad/s.
(3) The rutting factor of the bitumen containing tourmaline
powder was higher than the bitumen without tourmaline
powder, indicating that the rutting resistance of bitumen
at high temperature was improved by tourmaline, for the
rigidity of bitumen was enhanced by tourmaline.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Nature Science Foun-
dation of China (Grant No. 51208045) and the Doctoral Program
Foundation of Institutions of Higher Education of China (Grant
No. 20110205120007) and the Fundamental Research Funds for
the Central Universities of Chang’an University (Grant No.
CHD2010JC065).
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