Storage stability of SBS modified bitumen based on mixed-level orthogonal array design

The styrene-butadiene-styrene（SBS） modified bitumens with different contents of SBS modifiers are stored in different conditions to study the storage stability of SBS modified bitumen.Mixed-level orthogonal array design（OAD） is used and factors such as SBS modifier content,storage time,storage temperature and container size are chosen in a mixed-level OAD with an OA16（31×44） matrix.Parameters like the separation softening point difference（the separation difference of the ring and ball softening point of the top and bottom samples） and the average softening point（the arithmetic mean of the softening points of the top and bottom samples） are proposed to evaluate the separation and the ageing of modified bitumen during storage in this experiment,respectively.The results reveal that the separation and the ageing during storage exhibit a complicated variation for storage temperature and time.The separation softening point difference decreases with the storage temperature rising from 20 to 120 ℃ and increases with the temperature exceeding 120 ℃,and the average softening point drops with the storage time being prolonged.Different storage conditions have various effects on the storage stability of SBS modified bitumen.