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posted by chromas on Tuesday November 20 2018, @08:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the where's-my-solar-plastic-roadways? dept.

Phys.org:

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 20 2018, @10:28PM (2 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 20 2018, @10:28PM (#764424)

    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.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @10:51PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @10:51PM (#764436)

    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

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 20 2018, @11:30PM (#764454)

      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.

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