ABSTRACT
The microanalysis for asphalt binder is already a trend in road materials, and Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation as important micro analysis technology is more and more widely used in the microanalysis. However, the existing asphalt binder models cannot solve some specific problem. In this paper, two asphalt binder models are created based on the conventional SARA method (saturate, aromatics, resin, and asphaltene) and a novel proposed six-fraction method (saturate, monoaromatics, diaromatics, polyaromatics, resin and asphaltene) to study the asphalt binders from a micro perspective. In order to verify the accuracy of the two molecular models, the Atom Force Microscopy (AFM) experiment is conducted. A comparison of the results shows that, comparing to the SARA model, the novel six-fraction model can better characterize the density and elastic modulus of the asphalt binder, indicating the six-fraction asphalt binder model is more accurate and can help us to better understand the micro-properties.
