Wax has a significant influence on the durability of roofing and pavement. The paper investigated the effects of wax dosages (1%, 3% and 5%) on the performance of bitumen during ultraviolet aging systematically from the macro and micro perspectives. The high-medium-low temperature rheological performance and chemical composition of bitumens were mainly studied, and their light-thermal sensitivity was used by differential scanning calorimetry and ultraviolet spectrophotometer tests, respectively. The results show that as the wax dosage of bitumens increased, their complex modulus decreased and the fatigue life increased. Also, the UV absorbance of wax-containing bitumen was generally lower than that of unwaxed bitumen, while the trend of change in glass transition temperature was the opposite. Furthermore, the addition of wax and the aging procedure led to the growth of sulfoxide index and wax index, accompanied by good linear relationships. In general, waxes were more likely to combine with asphaltenes during the crystallization process.
Chen et al. (Thu,) studied this question.