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from the where's-my-solar-plastic-roadways? dept.
Imagine a drive to grandma's house or to work with fewer "left lane closed ahead" signs, fewer detour signs, fewer orange barrels and also safer travel near road crews. That may soon be possible with new technology from Purdue University researchers.
...
This technology uses electrical resistance measurements to determine when the emulsified asphalt in a chip seal has sufficiently cured and can therefore withstand traffic without sustaining damage. Such real-time measurements help ensure that the road repairs are done correctly and more quickly than using current methods."Typical approaches to quantify emulsified asphalt-based chip seal curing times are varied and qualitative," said John Haddock, a professor of civil engineering and the director of the Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program, who leads the research team. "Having a quantitative, real-time measurement method can help construction crews make good decisions that result in a quality chip seal project with minimal traffic disruption."
The engineers will know exactly when the asphalt can be driven on.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Tuesday November 20 2018, @09:53PM (10 children)
Solar Roadways [solarroadways.com], or just even concrete, is vastly superior to asphalt. What asphalt has going for it is the expensive long term maintenance, and that's good for all the people who get rich of contracts for it. In other words, asphalt is perfect for corruption simply because of how fucking crappy it is.
Last time I was looking at Solar Roadways, they believe they can get under the cost of asphalt when you take into account the maintenance. The asphalt tech in this article, while it sounds interesting, pales in comparison to the maintenance of a Solar Roadway. It's modular can be replaced out by a machine the drives over it. Replacements could be done in fractions of the time it takes to repair asphalt, with using less resources. If they develop a quick disconnect for a module, it could be entirely possible to get maintenance down to minutes. That's automated too.
Considering where we are trying to go with AI driven cars, magnetic levitation that requires infrastructure support, old ass technology like asphalt needs to be retired. What's it is really good at is creating potholes.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @10:06PM
Concrete forms much nastier potholes in a climate where the yearly temperature swing ranges from -40 to +100 degrees (-40 to +38 C), with water getting into the works and breaking things up. Asphalt isn't great, but is a quick patch in the middle of winter when fresh concrete won't cure properly or in a timely fashion. Salt and sand from making the roads safe also doesn't do nice things to concrete over time.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 20 2018, @10:28PM (2 children)
What asphalt is really good at is creating continued employment and owner profits for a huge global industry. It's also a well characterized and (as demonstrated by TFA) highly optimized process that produces predictable results for, mostly, governments who order huge infrastructure projects that use it.
Maglev, solar, boring vacuum tubes, and all the rest promise (and will, to some extent, deliver) big advances and benefits in certain specific use cases. They will also deliver surprise maintenance expenses, downtime, and other inconveniences as their technology matures.
Meanwhile, I'm about to order up $3000 worth of #57 limerock to pave 400' of presently bare sand shared/private driveway for 3 houses, and there ain't no way that any fancy new tech is going to come close to cost parity with that solution in that location. Similar for asphalt neighborhood streets and the billions of vehicles that feed into the worldwide major roadway system from the established lo-tech network of private garages and driveways.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @10:51PM (1 child)
The Goog suggests:
> 57 Limestone. 3/4-1” clean crushed limestone. This material is the most common driveway and parking lot topping.
We had a gravel driveway, about 150 feet long, for 50 years (since I was a kid). If the stones are all nearly the same size, it never packs, always scatters around...until enough dust and dirt filter in (or come up from below) and start to fill the voids.
At one point, someone suggested using a product called "crusher run". In this case we ordered 1/2" and down -- "crusher run" means that you also get the finer bits, including some fraction of very small chips. In other words, it's everything that falls through the 1/2" screen. The result is that driving (carefully) on it really packs it together well. This is similar to the mix of gravel and sand that is used with Portland cement to make concrete (minus the cement).
Let us know what you do, and how it comes out!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 20 2018, @11:30PM
I've been mixing #57 and #89 on about 150' of our private sand based driveway and it has packed to a pretty solid surface. The part that is just straight #57 does need a little something to settle it into place, probably do that after it has had a chance to sink into the underlying sand for a year or so.
The lime also does some chemical stuff together with the slightly acidic oak-leaf infused soil that I think has helped it to lock in. Whatever is going on in the base, it definitely throws up less sand and dust than the bare soil that was there before. About 4 years after we moved here I stopped messing around with one yard here and one yard there of the limerock and ordered up a truck with 15 yards of #89, partly because the driveway was starting to rut a couple of inches below the surrounding soil, and mostly because I was just tired of the dust clouds.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @12:14AM
Solar Roadways are pure, unadulterated garbage. There are so many problems I don't know where to begin. First is the fact that the modular design will be ruined by differential loading. Second is the abysmal failure rate their prototypes have had, including multiple complete install replacements, one fire, and more burned out LED than I can count. Third is their terrible efficiency as solar cells, as the whole system has generated a handful dollars over the course of two years. Fourth is surface problems off class, like glare, wear, and coefficients of friction. Fifth, the cost of heaters vs just plowing the darn thing. Sixth, the high voltage electrical distribution required wherever this is. And I could go on. Fact of the matter is that roadways are the last place you want expensive solar cells, especially when there are plenty of alternative locations, like nearby roofs, or even sidewalks.
And even if we agree that putting solar cells on the roads is a good idea, I'd rather go with a bigger established company, like the one behind the Wattway or the one behind the bike trail in the Netherlands, rather than this group, whose only redeeming features seem to be their ability to market and get government grants.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 21 2018, @04:36AM (3 children)
Solar roadways are what you get when you try to create a list of the worst possible places to put solar panels. They quite simply do not work as promised, and never have even come close. They are, in short, a ridiculously stupid idea and you're being stupid for thinking it was a good idea.
The biggest problem should be blindingly obvious for anyone who thinks about this for more than about 10 seconds: There is currently no such thing as a reasonably inexpensive transparent solid that does not get damaged in any way by repeatedly getting run over by an 40-ton 18-wheeler, and can also somehow clean itself of dirt and grit and oil that routinely falls on roads while periodically getting run over by 40-ton 18-wheelers. Until that solid exists, there's no point in even considering doing this, especially as there are plenty of places to put solar panels that don't get run over by 40-ton 18-wheelers all the time.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @06:36AM (2 children)
They didn't make it as a COVERING ABOVE THE ROAD.
Yeah it will cost more having to put in beams and posts and frames above the road. But it gives the added benefit of the road being enclosed, which in many areas with unpleasant seasonal weather would more than pay for itself. Hell, if you added in heating coils so you can keep it free of snow it would provide a net benefit, keeping the road free without sanding/salting, and providing water, which if carefully managed, could create an ice wall just off the road to help hold back the snow while keeping the road itself dry and clear for traffic during times it might otherwise be closed.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 21 2018, @11:58AM (1 child)
That brings up another major problem: The idea of melting off the snow with the electricity generated would require way more energy than can be produced by the panels, and be huge drain of power even if we used the grid to do it. The only methods in common use for dealing with snow are (a) move it someplace else, or (b) add salt or another chemical which lowers its melting point a bit. That's it. If melting it off really was such a great idea, you'd see people routinely doing that across the parts of the world where snow is common because it would save an awful lot of work.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @04:29PM
Recently I saw (c), compress snow into ice blocks, which are much more compact to move/store than heaps of snow (full of air). Here's one https://www.autoevolution.com/news/autonomous-robot-eats-snow-turns-it-into-ice-blocks-video-89569.html [autoevolution.com] I think there may have been others.
Sort of a water-tight garbage compactor...
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday November 21 2018, @07:30PM
> even concrete, is vastly superior to asphalt
That's nice, except asphalt is concrete. Or more specifically, what is generally called asphalt is really asphalt concrete, a specific blend of concrete which contains asphalt/bitumen designed specifically for road paving. Like all concrete, they need to be carefully mixed and cured for maximum strength; this is probably where most of the durability issues come from.
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