Speaker
Description
Abstract. The mechanism of moisture damage at the bitumen-aggregate in-terface is a crucial but unresolved issue in pavement engineering. In this pa-per, an innovative molecular dynamics (MD) modeling approach was de-veloped to address this challenge. This method incorporates nanoscale moisture diffusion and migration into consideration, which provides a more accurate representation of the real damage process. Bitumen and two minerals, namely quartz and calcite, are selected to construct the simulation model. The model is subjected to pore water pressure to simulate the bitu-men-aggregate interfacial debonding process. Simulation results reveal a non-uniform diffusion phenomenon at the interface: the closer water mole-cules are to the aggregate surface, the weaker their ability to diffuse and mi-grate, which significantly affects the interfacial debonding process. Find-ings from this research contribute to comprehending the fundamental debonding mechanisms and provide an atomic-level perspective to investi-gate the moisture damage in pavement engineering.
