This volume contains the Proceedings of the RILEM TC 252-CMB International Symposium on the Chemo-Mechanical Characterization of Bituminous Materials. The Symposium was attended by researchers and practitioners from different fields presenting the latest findings in the chemical, mechanical, and microstructural characterization of bituminous materials. The book offers new and cutting edge papers on innovative techniques for the characterization of bituminous materials, gaining new insights into current issues such as effects of aging, moisture, and temperature.

This book presents new studies dealing with the attempts made by the scientists and practitioners to address contemporary issues in pavement engineering such as aging and modification of asphalt binders, performance evaluation of warm mix asphalt, and mechanical-based pavement structure analysis, etc.. Asphalt binder and mixture have been widely used to construct flexible pavements. Mechanical and Chemical characterizations of asphalt materials and integration of these properties into pavement structures and distresses analysis are of great importance to design a sustainable flexible pavement. This book includes discusses and new results dealing with these issues. Papers were selected from the 5th GeoChina International Conference 2018 – Civil Infrastructures Confronting Severe Weathers and Climate Changes: From Failure to Sustainability, held on July 23 to 25, 2018 in HangZhou, China.

Asphalt modification is an important area in the development of new road and pavement materials. There is an urgent demand for road materials that can minimize fracture at low temperatures and increase resistance to deformation at high temperatures. The function of asphalt is to bind aggregate to protect it from water and other harmful agents. In the beginning asphalt was ideal for this purpose, but recently traffic loads have increased and environmental factors have deteriorated more rapidly than before. Asphalt is a byproduct of crude oil in the refining process, and it is considered a complex heterogeneous mixture of hydrocarbons. Asphalt modification has become an important research area, using several methods and new materials as modifiers.