Focus: Innovation

NEW SELF-HEALING PAVEMENT TECHNOLOGY

A new pavement type designed by Erik Schlangen is a “self-healing asphalt machine” to work against damage over time — and captures the kind of innovative thinking the ASCE Grand Challenge calls for. The pavement is a porous material that allows water to drain through the surfaces, running to the side of the road or routed into collection devices.

To achieve these exciting results, Eric started with steel wool, cutting small pieces of the material and inserting it into the asphalt mix. Induction heating of the mixture allows the steel wool to seep into the microcracks, ultimately creating a stronger product.

The Dutch government took an interest in Schlangen’s project and donated four hundred meters of a major roadway for testing. After a period of weeks during which the material was traveled upon, samples from the road were tested in the lab to find the effects of aging, loading, and the environment. The promising lab results indicate that the new material could be used on a road surface every four years to double the surface life of the road.

Another exciting and innovative material out of the Netherlands is “self-healing” concrete that uses injected bacteria that activates if water leaks in through cracks. The bacteria repairs and seals up the cracks by turning into limestone, according to professor Henk Jonkers of Delft University of Technology, who pioneered the new material and plans to call it “bioconcrete”.

Source: ASCE Game Changers