Asphalt Cracks

HDPE

Plastics tend to be low friction... not ideal for a road surface.

IMO most of the problems are due to poor workmanship. Nearly all patched pothole fail again at the edge... and most patched pot holes near where I live have other potholes within 10 yards that don't get filled because some jobsworth doesn't have it on his work sheet.

As far as I can see it's like the difference between actually welding a crack and simply pouring molten metal over it... the latter just isn't going to work.

What it needs is decent workmen with a brief to do a good job along a whole stretch of road.

Bear in mind I'm in small town UK... doubtless it's diffeernt in the US.

Del

"doubtless it's diffeernt in the US."

HA!

Most likely the same everywhere!

"Bear in mind I'm in small town UK... doubtless it's diffeernt in the US."

Oh, it IS different in the US.

It's WORSE.

You'll find roads where the crappy patch jobs literally overlap, turning the street into something about as smooth as an endless tumble down an upward moving escalator.

Then they finally resurface the entire street, scraping the asphalt away to reveal the concrete foundation, bearing the gouges from the 'desurfacing' equipment. They will 'take the street back to the shop' and keep it there for about a week or two, during which time drivers now have to deal with a road that is all ROUGH GROOVED SURFACE as described by the friendly road signs that have blown over and are laying where they cannot be seen until you run over them. After that delay, they FINALLY but down the new asphalt, and after a slow, laborious process where workers struggle against weighty inertia to run these 20 pound (or however few kilos) roller carts down the street to paint the new road lines on. THEN the street is finally repaired and driveably smooth...

...until the next day when the gas, water, and sewer maintenance crews show up to dig up half the street to repair the underground lines, finishing off their slow, painstaking work with ... wait for it ... a crappy patch job that will decay into potholes within one week or one light drizzle, whichever comes first.

Some days these road crews make me wish the Vogon Constructor Fleet would just hurry up and put them out of my misery. I make sure to keep a towel in my car, just in case.

...

(*sigh*) Still miss you, Douglas Adams.

Nowadays, because of heavy rain and other extreme weather conditions, it damages the asphalt road, and the roads need to be repaired frequently.
Asphalt driveways develop cracks and it is necessary to fix these cracks in a timely manner to protect the durability and appearance of the driveway. Asphalt companies in Long Island repair the asphalt cracks by adding more blacktop material and repeat the tamping process to ensure a consistent, level driveway.

One of the better techniques is this:

1) remove the old asphalt

2) apply new road base material

3) pack the road base intensely

4) install geofabric liner to road bed (prevents water from channeling in underneath, and also from getting to the base material when cracks develop)

5) apply asphalt or concrete over the geofabric.

Around Canton, OH, I suggest that they take a look at 100-YEAR-old brick roads. Where they haven't been dug up for repair thru the years, they are in decent shape. What would asphalt be like in 100 years?

2000 year old Roman method:

Engineer is guy with print.

... and some of those roads are still around

And part of that is the maintenance plan:

The Romans didn't just build roads, they planted olive trees alongside of it.

Once a road section was done, the Army (which was the organization MAKING the roads) contracted with a local businessman: The businessman would inspect and repair the road for X years at his own cost, in exchange, he had exclusive rights to harvest and sell the olives from the trees along that stretch of road for the same X years. The contracts typically had auto-renewal clauses in them, so if nobody was upset about the arrangement to speak up against it at renewal time, the contract would go on and on, in perpetuity. There was also a clause in there that the contract would continue with the businessman's heir should he die while the contract was in effect. Those contracts were built as solid and sturdy as the roads.

I just wouldn't want to drive on that road at 65 MPH!

It would sound like a machine gun and feel like a jack hammer!

But yes, some of those roads are still around and usable.

Those are actually loaves of bread.

Oh! Now that changes everything! A tasty snack if you break down on the road?

Those are actually loaves of bread.

I thought they were pillows and that was why they called it a road bed.

"I just wouldn't want to drive on that road at 65 MPH!"

Mac, you realize that those roads were never intended for such incredible, unbelievable speeds. Why, you wouldn't even expect Jupiter Himself to jog down a road so fast he'd be less than a minute between milestones. He could be miles away in an instant, but that's Divine Translocation: He's here, then he's there, but he didn't have to cover all the distance in between. These speeds you speak of would have the Romans declaring you mad, cursed by the Gods!

The typical speeds you'd find on these roads are:

• Pedestrians: 1 mile/hour
• Solders (in formation): 1.5 miles/hour
• Foot Messenger (at sprint): 2 miles/hour
  
• Merchant, in horse-drawn cart: 3-4 miles/hour
• Horse Messenger (at gallop): 25-30 miles per hour

Out of all of these, it would be the galloping horse messenger that is exceeding the 'safe' speed for the road, around 10 miles per hour, and would likely be damaging the road surface, knocking tiles loose as he flies by like the wind.

The advantage of the road is that in bad weather, you'd see only a 10-20% drop in speeds on average, where on poorer roads, and on footpaths, bad weather could drop all traveling speeds to a miserable, slogging, half mile per hour.

Traveling down a stout roman road at twice the speed of a fast horse, ha, the man is as crazy as a Gaul.

There are certainly less Roman roads in Illinois than here in the UK so I will excuse your estimate of speeds being a bit out. Roman soldiers generally marched 20 miles in a 5 hour day when on good roads and in a forced march would cover 24 miles in the same time. The Roman road from Chester (Deva) to York (Eboracum) passes 4 miles from my home at a place now called Warrington. This was the first overnight stop for troops marching from Chester and is 22 miles along the Roman road. By pedestrians I assume that you mean plebeians and their pace would be nearer to 3 miles per hour. Foot messengers, remember the battle of Marathon. That messenger did 26 miles in under 4 hours and while we now hail that as a feat of athletics, it was not untypical for the time. Merchants and military baggage trains were more likely to be pulled by oxen or donkeys than horses and were much slower than soldiers on the march. There is much documentary evidence of soldiers complaining that after a days march they had to wait for the baggage train to arrive before that could pitch their tents. There was a well established dispatch rider/coach service throughout the whole Roman Empire called the Cursus Publicus. (Very much like a fore runner to a combined Pony Express and Wells Fargo.) Relay stations, positioned at approximately eight mile intervals along all major routes were privately run but licensed by the state. They were obliged to provide changes of horses, donkeys, oxen and carts as well as food and accommodation. The Veredi (fast riders on saddle horses) would travel at about 10 miles per hour between dawn and dusk with stops for food and changes of horses (Up to 64 miles a day in the summer months but more like 40 miles per day in winter) Plutarch states that Julius Ceasar once traveled 100 miles per day for 8 consecutive days using a Raeda which is a four wheeled carriage pulled by two horses. These horses would also have been changed every 8 miles.

Well, I based my speeds on typical human walking/sprinting speeds, and the typical horse walking/galloping speeds. Since one mile of road does not care what abuse the stretch a few miles distant has suffered, I estimated 'peak speeds' for working out what the road was expected to endure, the road builders couldn't tell WHICH mile the rider was going to kick the horse into 'live-or-death' run if the horse exchange points were further apart than a fit horse could travel at full gallop without slowing down to rest, so they'd have to build the WHOLE road to handle the full speed the whole way. (That was also the kind of thinking that led to the Magino Line, "We don't know where the Germands wil push the offensive, wo se need to defend the whole border equally to avoid a weak spot they can take advantage of." Unfortunately that meant that the Germans just had to concentrate their offensive at one point, ANY point, to break through.)

Ah, I also see I was a bit off in my math on human walking speeds. But still, the human traffic wasn't the heavy wear like the horse and horsecart traffic.

http://www.terryburns.net/How_fast_could_they_travel.htm

Horse travel: (copied verbatim from the above link) I find this an interesting side topic. Not only that, horses already run on bio-fuel, and help sustain the land they travel over, by leaving their contributions.

A horse will walk 3-4 mph, trot about 8-10 mph and gallop depending on the ability of the animal and the terrain at 30-40 mph. According to the U S Cavalry a horse can cover some 30-40 miles a day but can be pushed to double that but then will be pretty much spent for several days while he recuperates. The US Cavalry mounted service cup race averaged 60 miles a day for five days carrying a rider and over 200 pounds of gear. A Pony Express rider would cover 75-100 miles on their portion of the mail run and would change horses at way stations every 10-15 miles. The entire 2000 miles of the trail would be covered in 10 days with riders riding 24 hours a day. That makes an average of about nine miles an hour according to express records, but daylight riders did much better and night riders moved much slower. By means of comparison modern racehorses have achieved records up to 40 mph.

How fast could a single horse if pushed to the limit? The 100-mile Tevis Cup race, held annually in Nevada and California. It goes over the Sierras, and the record time to win is 10 hours, 46 minutes (riders have 24 hours to complete it). It's a VERY rugged course, and the race is held during the full moon in July each year to give maximum "light" hours. These horses are strictly monitored along the way at veterinary checks and must be found "fit to continue" at the end. Think about THAT for minute! The Best Conditioned award is as coveted as the winning time award. Of course, these horses are well trained for the event for months in advance (LONGEST time for a winner of the Tevis over the years--since 1961-is 16 hours, 23 minutes). Endurance riding began with cavalry exercises in which troopers rode 100 miles a day for three days. So, yes, horses can carry a person that far that fast if they are in good shape.

A wagon might do 15-25 miles in a day if it was being pulled by horses or mules. Oxen on the other hand only traveled one or two miles and hour but didn't require as much rest or as good a forage as horses or mules. They might do 10-12 miles in a 10 hour day. A train would make good time where there was something of a road or trail but then might spend an entire day or even more lowering wagons down a bad grade or floating them across a river. Then, wagon trains didn't travel the most direct route either. A scout out front took them through the most favorable, or more level terrain, and they could only carry so much water so choosing a route that took advantage of available water had a lot to do with how directly toward their objective they were traveling. Still, wagons moved at a pace where occupants often walked alongside and since we've established the speed of a man or horse walking at some 3-4 mph, that'd be the speed of the wagon too if no obstacles are involved.

A stagecoach would run on an established route similar to the Pony Express and would make much better time than a wagon train. Running 24 hours a day and with relays of fresh teams they usually covered the route in a little better than half the time of the feisty express riders. Of course they also stopped to rest and feed passengers. This generally had them covering some 100-150 miles in a 24 hour period depending on how good the roads were and the other factors mentioned above. The Wells Fargo site says the coaches traveled 5 to 12 mph, depending on terrain. When they used the "southern route" (pre-Civil War 1857-1861) they went from St. Louis to San Francisco in 25 days (leaving twice a week for this route). In 1861 they started using the route the Pony Express had used (across the plains farther north) and no doubt cut the time, though I don't see exactly how long this route took (the Pony did it in 10 days from St. Joseph to Sacramento).

The Egyptians had fast chariot rigs, but they hadn't invented the horse snorkel in time.

I suspect the curriers would gallop along out side of the road. It would be safer for the people and the horse at full speed.

Hey!!

Everyone knows it's the ROMANS that are crazy!

Ahhh the good old days...you didn't have to worry about money in retirement,,,nobody lived that long....

Danger! Fresh Olive Oil!

Ahhh... yes, but my asphault crack is not fairing any better with age.

Or, he could be an innocent bystander with a copy of the Roman Times?

IF they had better wheels back then, maybe the roads would still be around, and shocks? Forget about finding a decent pair of shocks back then. Most of them had holes in them and needed darning, if not damning outright.

Maybe soft pavement is the answer.

South and Central Asia

Ozzb: Matches what I have been saying for years: They take the hole, fill it up and make a bump out of it.

Of course the bump causes impact to the patch as well as the car/truck, which helps it to loosen and come out.

I think I have seen them put the patching stuff in a hole with water in it--promotes adhesion!! At least they ought to blow out the dust and crud with compressed air.

You need one of these pothole filling machines...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KknPrG1ATeE

http://gothamist.com/2012/03/20/290k_pothole_machine_sputters_but_h.php

Why in tarnation would you want to pull up a perfectly good road and make a pile of bricks out of it?

I was gonna call BS on that one....but it's a real one.

Oh it's real, all right, just missing a few components: the 3-6 laborers who stand on it stacking that loose pile of bricks into a herringbone pattern while the machine creeps along. I've seen footage, those guys have to HUSTLE to keep up with it.

One less pot hole:

That...... looks like a mortar shell to me.

That is a "SMART" mortar, It homes in on the gas cap. The tire was a run-flat.

Nice catch though.....I wonder if his insurance covers that....

Hey,, is that a Cavalier...?

Hey! That looks like a mortar round! Yes?

Definitely a dud round, right smack in the filler cap door!

I have a thought about pothole repairs. I would like engineers here to tell me if my idea would or would not work. Asphalt is made from a mixture of bitumen and aggregate, as the bitumen drys out the aggregate is exposed and the surface gets porous, water seeps in, cracks develop leading to potholes. A pothole is sortof round shapped. Here is my idea. A drill with a 90* head is lowered into the hole, a series of holes are drilled into the holes walls, an epoxy mixture is injected in to the drilled holes, something like rebar is inserted into the holes forming a crisscrossing lattice, asphalt ( mixed with shredded plastic) is poured into the hole like wet cement, a hardener( like JB weld) is prefixed with the liquid. When set and cured, the new asphalt is reluctant to pull out because of the bond to the lattice. Would it be possible to build a machine that could be placed over the hole and perform the necessary steps. The stuff they use around here consists of two guys with shovels and a bag of instant asphalt patch, 3 weeks later they are back again, it seems the whole issue is that there is not an anchor method to hold the asphalt in place.

"something like rebar is inserted into the holes forming a crisscrossing lattice,"

It was at this point that I started screaming like the next victim in a horror movie.

Asphalt is by its nature, soft and pliable, although highly viscous. the rebar lattice, and whatever hard-curing epoxy you're planning on using to lock things in place, would migrate to the surface as the road receives use. If the end that points towards oncoming traffic lifts up first, what you have is Severe Tire Damage, and possibly (likely) horrible car accidents that cause massive damage all around the area.

The concept works elsewhere, though, they actually use rebar 'dowels' to hold adjacent concrete slabs together when building a highway, and when they need to patch the concrete subsurface, they pour over a rebar lattice they built in the opening, and the lattice extends out into holes drilled into the neighboring concrete.

So, good idea, just wrong application. Keep working at it, Tony, you'll earn your Junior Engineer merit badge soon enough.

I understand the screaming that you might have to endure, I often screamed whenever I traveled east from Iowa or West from Indiana on the I-80 / I-80-90. The backups,delays and the never ending job. I still remember getting on the cb radio and talking to local drivers telling me how grandfathers were working with grandsons on the same interstate road construction jobs. Using a rebar type of material to fill the potholes ( or shall I say moon craters ) in the Chicago land area would actually be an improvement ! Seriously in your state, asphalt roads really don't make sense as concrete does a better job as a road surface. When your in a vehicle that gives you a view of the road 9 feet above the surface and you see how roads are repaired over the 48 continental states, you get a pretty good idea of how a whole lotta jurisdictions are going about fixing potholes. I see that the Boy Scouts today have the " Junior Engineering Merit Badge". Back when I was in the scouts, we had to " Earn" badges in welding, drafting, wood working, metal craft, leather craft, electronics and yes, basket weaving, I guess that qualifies me as a junior engineer.

Hey, don't knock basket weaving, someday, when you're stuck out in the wilderness and have to set a fancy dinner on a picnic bench, those woven-reed placemats will come in handy.

(You may not use those skills often, but you'll be the envy of your peers when you're the one who can use the weaving skills you learned making baskets and mats to repair a hammock, or to safely and securely die down an unwieldly load on a flatbed, or be able to make handbags and rucksacks out of rope for shopping once they ban all the plastic bags.)

You and I see this concrete crazy quilt repair around here, due to the proximity to the giant Thorten quarries. It is a effective repair, provide the rubber gaskets applied to the joints don't pop out after a couple of months and allow freeze/thaw cycles to require re-repair. I'm sure it breaks the hearts of General Dynamics, Material Service to have to come back so soon.

Unfortunately a permanent fix/repair would render 1000's of council workers jobs redundant. That's part of the truth.

What gets up my nose is when a whole section of road is re-laid and some private contractor needs to hook up power or water from the other side of the road is allowed to cut a trench right across the road as long as they fix/repair it. ZIt onlt become a speed hump then a dip - on a virtually new road.

daffy: I get the same feeling when they raise/lower the manhole covers AFTER they do the paving--instant patch on a brand new road.

This seems to be a good solution:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2858316/Potholes-fix-Engineers-say-self-healing-concrete-use-bacteria-stop-cracks-gaps-getting-bigger-used-future.html

Plastics are already added to roofing Bitumen products to reduce cracking and warranties of twenty years are offered on this type of product. The plastics are either polypropylene or styrene based depending on the use. For general road applications this makes the asphalt too soft, but it is used in expansion joints on bridges and raised highways. All of the bitumen plants I have helped to design use recycled plastics as a way of keeping the costs low. Rubber from ground up tyres are also put into some roofing products. In roofing felt materials this is claimed to make the product more flexible and less liable to cracking where it is laid with tight bends. Rubber inclusion does not degrade the working life of roads. The reason that rubber is not used extensively in roads is that it makes recycling old road asphalt into new road asphalt more difficult and expensive. If when a road is resurfaced the old asphalt has to go to landfill any initial cost savings made by substituting rubber as a cheap filler in place of all bitumen are wiped out.

Recycled asphalt in Florida does not go to a landfill, it is fine ground and used (spelled SOLD) for driveways.

"Plastics are already added to roofing Bitumen products to reduce cracking and warranties of twenty years are offered on this type of product."

But you don't normally DRIVE on roofs, do you?

...

Do you?

...

it's generally not good for the bitumen shingles, or the rafters: http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/25803/Caption-This-for-03-27-15

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Research/Reports/100/133.1.htm

in use in Tacoma :)

Check out the information superhighway:

http://blogs.gonomad.com/readuponit/2008/10/dakota-roads-are-made-of-ground-up-computers.html

"In Colorado and the Dakotas, 20% of the asphalt is made of crushed, ground-up computers. It's ground almost to dust and lasts forever,"

"In Colorado and the Dakotas, 20% of the asphalt is made of crushed, ground-up computers. It's ground almost to dust and lasts forever,"

But I keep having to clean bits out of my air cleaner and I get chips on my windshield!

They're taking old tires and grinding them up and using in asphalt in places with cold climates because it extends the life of the road by making it better able to expand and contract from temperature change.

We just drive on the beach here, cracks are self-repairing....

At Jacksonville Beach, some fool left a jeep parked below the high tide line. Mother Nature recycled it.

You'd be surprised that happens all the time...Evidently some tourists just don't understand the whole tidal thing....Some people just go with it..

So....then....what you are telling us is..."hey everyone move to Miami"?

How about in Lubbock, we replace the worn-out, pot-hole pocked path to Whataburger with simple thixotropic blow sand, and an automatical road washer to keep pumping the sand back into the hole?

There definitely needs to be a road bed below the concrete that can be maintained in a semi-dry state, low in plasticity even under 60 tons loading, and hydrophobic.

I have got it! Used dried skunk carcasses. Prairie dogs just can't do anything but cause more holes to appear.

Yep, themair prairie dogs is nothin but a gol dang nusent!

In Philadelphia in the 70's they added crushed glass to the roads. They held up great but looked funny at night when the headlights hit it just right.

The old aircraft carrier flight decks had wood planks covered with a rubber compound and an aggressive grit. It was called "Non-Skid". It could be called No-Skin if you fell on it.

"The old aircraft carrier flight decks had wood planks covered with a rubber compound and an aggressive grit. It was called "Non-Skid". It could be called No-Skin if you fell on it."

Well, 'non-skid' grit is basically a coarse sandpaper, with that application, I'm guessing an effective 10-20 grit

In my machine shop days we would patch the pot holes in the parking lot with chips from our brake drum lathe, abundant, consistent size, easy application, permanent.

just add water to the hole, add chips and tamp it down flat, once it oxidized it was very permanent.

didn't even show the tell-tale red color after a few days of being run over.

Even I am tired of these stupid potholes near my house and trust me they have affected me a lot. A number of accidents took place because of those potholes, even I had one. Yes I have heard about mixing non biodegradable plastic gets mixed with the asphalt and it lasts for years and is water resistant as well. A friend of mine saw this in his area when some Paving Contractors at Queens was doing that. He was impressed with his work as that road lasted for years.

Several years ago some people at CWRU (Case Western Reserve University) were doing some experimentation with a "non-newtonian" fluid for repairing pot holes. My understanding is that this is sorta like silly putty, because it will slowly flow into the hole and level itself, but be rigid when impacted by a vehicle. I have heard nothing recently about this research.

Now I can't get the image of potholes being filled with cornstarch & water out of my head.