Dielectric measurement of bitumen: A review

Abstract

Bitumen is a rheological, viscoelastic, thermoplastic and extremely complex material that has hydrocarbons as its predominant molecules with slight traces of others. Bitumen is semi-solid at room temperature, liquid at high temperature and solid at a very low temperature. Till date, a complete understanding of its properties have not been fully known. Various techniques/methods have been developed by many researchers to study the behavior of this complex material. Most of the techniques are proved to be effective in evaluating some of the properties but very costly. This paper presents a review on some of the work conducted on investigating the behaviors of bitumen using microwave technique. This technique has been shown to be simple, less time consuming and cost-effective in evaluating both physical and rheological properties of bitumen when compared with other techniques.