The first engineered self-healing asphalt road: How is it performing?

Porous asphalt shows excellent performance in both noise reduction and water drainage. Although porous asphalt has these great qualities, its service life is much shorter (sometimes only half) compared to dense graded asphalt roads. Ravelling, which is the loss of aggregate particles from the surface layer, is the main damage mechanism of porous asphalt surface wearing courses. In this research, an induction healing approach (namely, activating the healing process of asphalt concrete through induction heating) was developed to enhance the durability of the porous asphalt roads. Steel fibres are added to a porous asphalt mixture to make it electrically conductive and suitable for induction heating. When micro cracks are expected to occur in the asphalt mastic of the pavement, the temperature of the mastic can be increased locally by induction heating of the steel fibres so that porous asphalt concrete can repair itself and close the cracks through the high temperature healing of the bitumen (diffusion and flow). The closure of micro cracks will prevent the formation of macro cracks. In such a way, ravelling can be avoided or delayed in the end. The healing potential of porous asphalt concrete with steel wool fibre was also evaluated in this research with both cylinder and beam samples. Damaged porous asphalt concrete with steel wool fibre can greatly restore its stiffness, strength and fatigue life with induction heating, which proves that the healing capacity of porous asphalt concrete with steel wool fibre is enhanced by induction heating. The optimal induction heating temperature is 85 ºC for porous asphalt concrete to obtain the best healing rate. Reheating does not decrease the healing rate of porous asphalt concrete, which means that heating can be repeated when cracks appear again. To apply the induction healing technology in real porous asphalt road, a trial section was constructed on Dutch motorway A58 in December 2010. This trial section survived the past three winters perfectly. Experiments were done on the cores drilled from the trial section and the results coincided with those on the laboratory made samples. The field cores showed good particle loss resistance, high strength, good fatigue resistance and high induction healing capacity. Based on the laboratory experiments and field experiences, induction healing can be a very good approach to enhance the durability of porous asphalt pavement.Structural EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience