Innovative Sealed Road Treatments

The problem with <...costs...> is that these vary from place to place due to the logistics of supply and the market conditions prevailing at a particular location. Only a local assessment can be made of them.

Such things are commercially sensitive and usually fall outside the domain of an international engineering forum. Any assessment really has no international value.

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm looking for "methods/techniques" that might have been trialed elsewhere. I can develop local costing models using local experience for material availability, equipment utilisation and such. We'll also need to factor in some additional project management costs for any novel method that does get to trial.

Also, I don't expect anyone to breach commercially sensitive detail or specific intellectual property, simply looking to the collective wisdom within the group.

Strategically, we are even reviewing whether bitumen will still be cost effective and whether moving to concrete or some other non-flexible surface will become necessary.

I bet that reinforcing the bitumen with some kind of fibre (*) would increase its service life considerably. But reducing costs 20 years in the future is probably a difficult sell.

* Hemp or maybe you could develop some kind of recycled stuff.

One big factor is weather. If you have snow and ice in the winter, the freezing breaks the pavement, and ice/snow removal is also hard on the road surface.

..."Sustainable and resilient pavement infrastructure is critical for current economic and environmental challenges. In the past 10 years, the pavement infrastructure strongly supports the rapid development of the global social economy.

New theories, new methods, new technologies and new materials related to pavement engineering are emerging. Deterioration of pavement infrastructure is a typical multi-physics problem.

Because of actual coupled behaviors of traffic and environmental conditions, predictions of pavement service life become more and more complicated and require a deep knowledge of pavement material analysis.

In order to summarize the current and determine the future research of pavement engineering, Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering (English Edition) has launched a review paper on the topic of “New innovations in pavement materials and engineering:

A review on pavement engineering research 2021”. Based on the joint-effort of 43 scholars from 24 well-known universities in highway engineering, this review paper systematically analyzes the research status and future development direction of 5 major fields of pavement engineering in the world.

The content includes asphalt binder performance and modeling, mixture performance and modeling of pavement materials, multi-scale mechanics, green and sustainable pavement, and intelligent pavement. Overall, this review paper is able to provide references and insights for researchers and engineers in the field of pavement engineering."...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209575642100101X

I personally would consider recycled glass and tires as base additives, maybe some fly ash and/or sand...In any case it requires a good deal of research into environmental conditions and perhaps specific recommendations for specific areas...

Post deleted: it was a repeat of post #3 which somehow got made when I started looking again.

Thanks all,

We are moving forward with treatment strategies based on keeping the good ones good and letting the poorer ones progress to normal end of life before full renewal.

Keeping the good ones good is based on selecting a less costly treatment, applied earlier in lifecycle so that there is reduced or no heavy patching before that treatment.

While we have the assets as segments (typically 500m to 1,000m length) we have scanning data for each 10m portion of each lane, so can select and deploy relatively targeted intervention.

Trouble is that if we do arrive at a cost effective method, the budgets will be trimmed or allocated elsewhere. Infinite expectations and finite resources to be allocated.

When you have to do a "full renewal", do you incorporate geosynthetics as you build up from the sub-grade to the asphalt overlay?

Maybe you could use recycled white elephants, sorry wind turbine blades, shredded to form and aggregate which would not only add a reflective value but rid the bush dumping that now goes on in Nt Qld. of the disused blades.

Locally, in the UK our county council have been spraying newer road surfaces with a resin which is claimed to extend the life of the road. Details here.

Hello,

Yes we do use geotex and such in rebuilding the lower pavement levels and also incorporate drainage lines to continue to remove moisture from the constructed road.

The idea about using turbine blades could have merit to replace small bridges . We do utilise available alternate materials where possible. We were one of the first to work with "Recycled Crushed Glass" (RCG) as a replacement in aggregate, asphalt and even the seal layers and still have some trial zones now approaching 15 years in place.

Our bitumen suppliers have done some work using crumb rubber (from old tyre recovery) with some success, but the later on-site testing for condition monitoring are corrupted by the different material behaviour. Stringing test (used to verify oxidation of bitumen) shows fail since the rubber doesn't string. With condition testing done every 500m that's a lot of expensive laboratory work. Still discovering what to do there.

We do use occasional "flush seal" and other thin coating technology for surface treatment, usually based on bitumen and then sand as this allows almost immediate traffic use. The epoxy options known here have longer curing times where traffic would not be allowed.

We are currently doing a lifecycle analysis about moving to concrete surface for low traffic situations (Cul-de-sac) where garbage service trucks are causing significant damage. The lower grip of that surface should not be an issue with the generally lower speeds. There is substantial up-front cost, but we believe the annual cost of ownership over say 100 years could be lower than current convention.

Thanks all for your input.

It would seem to be a good idea to incorporate plastic recycling in the picture somehow...to listen to the news you wood think plastic lasts forever, just what you need in a road....found this...

..."“Plastic roads” – roadways paved with polymer-modified asphalt (PMA) using postconsumer recycled plastic. To construct these roads, plastic waste is first collected. Volunteers pick through debris, which is taken to local recyclers who process the material."....

https://corporate.dow.com/en-us

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-paving-with-plastic-could-make-a-dent-in-the-global-waste-problem

..."This year the first road made of recycled plastic was completed in California. A stretch of 1 mile has been successfully replaced with recycled plastic from single-use plastic bottles. It’s estimated that it took 150,000 bottles to complete the road in Oroville.

The road has proved 2-3 times more durable than normal asphalt. The construction was brought together by TechniSoil and state transit officials. TechniSoil is paving the way of innovation in sustainability and functionality in landscaping. Their first initiative of plastic-infused asphalt was in downtown Los Angeles, and following its success led onto the larger project in California."...

https://www.itslogicnow.com/blogs/logic-stories/california-highway-has-first-state-road-made-of-recycled-plastic-in-the-us

..."Dr. Rajagopalan Vasudevan, the “plastic man of India,” patenting a plastic road construction method in 2006. Since then, India has built more than 2,500 km (about half the width of the United States) of plastic roads and globally too, plastic roads are proliferating in more than 15 countries with projects being piloted or under construction."...