Volume 14, Issue 6

A viscosity function for highly-shear-thinning or yield-stress liquids such as pastes and slurries is proposed. This function is continuous and presents a low shear-rate viscosity plateau, followed by a sharp viscosity drop at a threshold shear stress value (yield stress), and a subsequent power-law region. The equation was fitted to data for Carbopol aqueous solutions at two different concentrations, a drilling fluid, an water/oil emulsion, a commercial mayonnaise, and a paper coating formulation. The quality of the fittings was generally good.

The term | G *|/(1-(1/tanδ sinδ)) has been suggested as one of the best candidates for the replacement of the Super-pave specification parameter | G *|/sinδ, which has been found to be inadequate in rating polymer-modified binders for high temperature performance grading. This refinement of the Superpave specification parameter evolved through a theoretical derivation based on fundamental concepts. It was shown to be more sensitive to the variations in the phase angle δ than the original Superpave specification parameter. It thus described the unrecovered strain in the asphalt binders more accurately, and hence related to actual field performance data. This article provides a comprehensive treatise of the parameter | G* |/(1-(1/tanδ sinδ)) giving details of its derivation, salient features that are attributed to its success, comparison with actual field performance data for validation and a one-on-one comparison with the existing parameter | G *|/sinδ. It is shown that for all available field data, the parameter | G *|/(1-(1/tanδ sinδ)) does a better job in correlating with the rutting behavior than the parameter | G *|/sinδ for unmodified as well as modified asphalts. Since it is obtained in the same manner as the parameter | G *|/sinδ through the determination of | G *| and δ from a stress-controlled or strain-controlled dynamic shear rheometer, it means that no retraining of technicians and staff is required and implementation for the use of this parameter is immediate, thereby saving enormous amount of time and money. This parameter has the further advantage of being in a form easily adaptable to modeling, and thereby directly applicable for pavement design purposes.

The behaviour of reverse micellar solution and reverse hexagonal and lamellar liquid crystal phases in pluronic L64/water/p-xylene ternary system was investigated by rheological techniques. Samples with an increasing water content along the amphiphilic copolymer-lean side of the ternary phase diagram were analysed at different temperatures and a different behaviour was evidenced by both dynamic and steady tests for each considered phase, depending on the morphology of structure (micellar, lamellar, hexagonal phases). It was observed that the reverse micelles size increases with increasing water concentration and decreases with increasing temperature, without any phase transition. On the contrary the normal micelles become anisometric on temperature, showing a transition to a liquid crystalline phase. The observed mechanical spectra of the liquid crystalline phases are typical of hexagonal and lamellar phases according to the literature [1, 2]. A phase transition with temperature was found for both liquid crystalline phase (lamellar and hexagonal) by rheological tests and was confirmed by ocular inspection.