Exponential deterioration in pavement caused by heavy loads, temperature variations, and rainfall had led to failure. To overcome those failures, bitumen properties needed be enhanced an economical sustainable way. Researchers have used various modifiers enhance the of virgin bitumen, but end product still does not seem accepted asphalt industry at required level. On other hand, construction co...

Production of highly viscous tar sand bitumen using Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) with a pair of horizontal wells has advantages over conventional steam flooding. This paper explores the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) as an alternative to the traditional SAGD simulation approach. Feed forward, multi-layered neural network meta-models are trained through the Back-...

An efficient method was employed for the ash and pyrite sulphur removal from bitumen using column flotation process. The bitumen samples containing 9.6% sulphur (6.81% in the pyrite sulphur form) and 26.4% ash were successfully showed up to 75.20% of pyrite sulphur (e.g.; 51.66% of total sulphur) and 70.81% of ash removal. The Box-Behnken Design (BBD) was employed to design the experiments, to ...

The present experimental research investigates the feasibility of partial substitution of styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS) with ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS) for the modification of bitumen and porous asphalt mixtures. The control asphalt mixture and the seven modified porous asphalt mixtures have been analyzed separately and their performance was compared. Modified bitumen and asp...

The present research aims to conduct laboratory assessment on fatigue phenomenon in warm mix asphalt modified with nano-silica and including reclaimed asphalt pavement materials by the aid of review on self-healing behavior and measurement of validity of laboratory results by modeling via neural artificial network in neutral network of SPSS software. For this purpose, 2% weight of sasobit and 3...

Western Research Institute is developing a new pyrolysis process called ROPE© (Recycle Oil Pyrolysis and Extraction) for recovering products from tar sands that require a minimum of upgrading to produce finished, marketable fuels or that can be used as a diluent to decrease the pour point of bitumen for transportation. The concept consists of two pyrolysis steps: (1) retorting tar sand at a low...

Most of the major plant, factory, process, equipment and tool disruptions are preventable, and yet preventative fault detection and diagnosis section are not the norm in most industries. It is not uncommon to see simple and preventable faults disrupt the operation of an entire integrated manufacturing facility. For examples faults such as malfunctioning sensors or actuators, inoperative alarm s...

We propose a four-component united-atom molecular model of bitumen. The model includes realistic chemical constituents and introduces a coarse graining level that suppresses the highest frequency modes. Molecular dynamics simulations of the model are carried out using graphic-processor-units based software in time spans in order of microseconds, which enables the study of slow relaxation proces...