LAUSR

Abstract Styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS)-modified asphalt plays an integral role in asphalt pavements. To facilitate the understanding of the correlations between the physical and chemical properties of asphalt cement and SBS, a method for the direct quantitative determination of the SBS modification mechanism via potentiometric titration is proposed. This method will theoretically guide the processing design of SBS-modified asphalts. Potentiometric titration is applied to investigate the unsaturation of SBS-mixed, SBS-modified, and SBS/sulfur-modified asphalts with different SBS dosages ranging from 0% to 10%. The unsaturation of SBS-mixed asphalt exhibits a good linear increase with an increase in SBS dosage. A noticeable loss of SBS unsaturation occurs in SBS- and SBS/sulfur-modified asphalts after undergoing complete modification. In addition, unsaturation presents an evident inflection point at approximately 5 wt% SBS with an increase in SBS dosage. This finding indicates SBS changing from a dispersed phase to a continuous phase in the modified asphalts. Remarkably, the addition of sulfur can accelerate the emergence of an inflection point. Results corroborate that various types of virgin asphalt exhibit different inflection points. SBS/sulfur-modified asphalt demonstrates stronger chemical cross-linking than SBS-modified asphalt. These findings are further confirmed via fluorescence imaging, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Potentiometric titration potentially provides a direct quantitative method for probing the modification mechanism of and designing customized processing for SBS-modified asphalts.