A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads
1–10 of 113 posts
Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads
#2I've always read that road damage was caused by heavy vehicles(semis) which stress fracture the roads, which in turn fill with water, freeze, expand, rinse and repeat. This article seems to imply it's caused by the road design itself, though. Wonder which is true (or both)?
Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads
#3I've always read that road damage was caused by heavy vehicles(semis) which stress fracture the roads, which in turn fill with water, freeze, expand, rinse and repeat. This article seems to imply it's caused by the road design itself, though. Wonder which is true (or both)?
We have potholes in Florida. No freezing.
Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads
#4I've always read that road damage was caused by heavy vehicles(semis) which stress fracture the roads, which in turn fill with water, freeze, expand, rinse and repeat. This article seems to imply it's caused by the road design itself, though. Wonder which is true (or both)?
We have potholes in Florida. No freezing.
But we don't really have potholes in CA, at least not the quantity and quality that I experienced living in PA. It's a minefield there right now, so I would imagine freezing is part of the problem, or at least exacerbates it.
Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads
#5I've always read that road damage was caused by heavy vehicles(semis) which stress fracture the roads, which in turn fill with water, freeze, expand, rinse and repeat. This article seems to imply it's caused by the road design itself, though. Wonder which is true (or both)?
We have potholes in Florida. No freezing.
rain will do the same thing though.
Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have potholes in Florida. No freezing.
But we don't really have potholes in CA, at least not the quantity and quality that I experienced living in PA. It's a minefield there right now, so I would imagine freezing is part of the problem, or at least exacerbates it.
I live in Santa Cruz CA and and deal with terribly potholed roads. The air temperature here rarely gets below freezing, and I've never seen any ice on the roads to indicate that the ground temperature has been below freezing. Clearly something besides the freeze/thaw cycle is causing potholes.
Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads
#7I've always read that road damage was caused by heavy vehicles(semis) which stress fracture the roads, which in turn fill with water, freeze, expand, rinse and repeat. This article seems to imply it's caused by the road design itself, though. Wonder which is true (or both)?
We have potholes in Florida. No freezing.
Put water inside the hole, run over it with a car that will put some pressure on it, and it'll fill all those small cracks inside the asphalt. Repeat many times.
Also, asphalt isn't solid, it get thinner when the sun is high, deforming every time a car runs over it in the summer.
South of south America, more or less equivalent to Florida: no freezing during winter and not that hot during summer, but everytime there's many rainy days, holes will appear. Get few days of hot sun and the roads will deform a bit, specially where trucks and buses run over.
Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads
#8I've always wondered why we still have such crappy roads, given that roads are possibly the oldest technology there is, and every civilized place on earth has paved roads, thus making an enormous potential market for a better solution. Either:
1) Most people don't care as much as I do about the bone-jarring, car-ruining potholes that are ubiquitous in every cold climate on earth, and thus aren't willing to spend their tax money on fixing it, or
2) Engineering a better road is simply too hard of an engineering problem, so what we have is the best we can do at the moment. Or equivalently, any better roads we do know how to make are too cost-prohibitive.
Maybe I'll forward this article to my local representatives.
Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads
#9I've always read that road damage was caused by heavy vehicles(semis) which stress fracture the roads, which in turn fill with water, freeze, expand, rinse and repeat. This article seems to imply it's caused by the road design itself, though. Wonder which is true (or both)?
Mere existence can't be eradicated. There are multiple issues. The existence of them (forgone), the frequency of their appearance and growth lifecycle. Changing any of those things, affects the maintenance problems.
Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads
#10The article calls the invention a paver but it is a compactor (what everyone calls a steamroller).
This article is a little more sciency:
https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/Technology/2017...
The paver is the machine that catches the asphalt out of the dump truck and spreads it across the road.