Abstract: Asphalt concrete, which is a composite material consisting of approximately 95% mineral aggregates and 5% petroleum-based product, is the most used building material in road construction. In the past, the importance of environmental protection has not been considered a priority, but more recently this has changed to become indisputably a subject of serious and persistent concerns as well as to assume a much wider scope. For instance, asphalt pavement is the most recycled material in the U.S. Not only recyclable, it can be reused over and over again in new asphalt pavement mixes. Recycled or re-claimed asphalt pavement (RAP) contains old asphalt binder and aggregates that can replace virgin materials. Despite that, RAP cannot be used as it is because it is more brittle than common asphalt concrete thus it needs to be modified with additives known as rejuvenators. Modified reclaimed asphalt pavement is a novel composite material that has gained interest from some decades ago. This seminar explores the potential of using bio-based rejuvenators in RAP binder from different perspectives by using a multi-scale approach. A holistic approach combing chemo-mechanical analysis is fundamental to understand the behaviour of these bio-modified binders. Rheological analysis in combination with mechanical performances have shown the effectiveness of rejuvenators. This effect was found valid after the analysis of the Young’s moduli distribution by using atomic force microscopy.

 

Short Bio: Maria Chiara Cavalli is currently doing a post-doctoral project on “multi-technique characterization of thin clay films during their creep” at Laboratoire Navier. The project is supported by DIM Respore which is an Ile-de-France network in porous solids science. It is a collaboration between Laboratoire Navier (Matthieu Vandamme, Michel Bornert), Phenix at Sorbonne Université (Laurent Michot, Pierre Levitz) and the lines SWING (Javier Perez) and ANATOMIX (Timm Weitkamp) at Synchrotron Soleil. Maria Chiara holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from ETH Zurich and a M.Sc. in civil engineering from University of Bologna.