31–40 of 113 posts
I'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 thei…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> South of south America, more or less equivalent to Florida Are you calling North America "America", and then go on and call Florida "south America", as if there isn't such a place in the world as South America? I do not approve of this North America-centric view of the world at all.
I don't approve of getting upset over turns of phrase online. Principle of charity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
PA is notoriously bad at coordinating tearing up with other work. It seems that 1ms after a clean paved road is down, someone in another dept is plotting to tear it up to get at their utility, then hire 2 guys with a shovel to do a very halfassed patch job afterwards, which either is heaved up high or sunk down low. The halfassed patch will become a pothole for the next 10 years of repatching it badly over and over a…
PA = Pennsylvania? There are two seasons in Pennsylvania, winter and construction.
Haha I really expected the "pothole problem" to be some kind of mathematical conjecture. Nope, literal holes in literal roads.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> South of south America, more or less equivalent to Florida Are you calling North America "America", and then go on and call Florida "south America", as if there isn't such a place in the world as South America? I do not approve of this North America-centric view of the world at all.
Depending on the geography class you took, and where, there might not be a "South America". Some countries just call the whole continent America:
Most North Americans are taught that there are 7 continents: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe and Australia/Oceania. In some textbooks, North and South America are combined into "America" and/or Europe and Asia are combined into "Eurasia", for a grant total of 6 or even 5.
I do not approve of your 7-continent view of the World, as if it was the only one.
I'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)?
I was literally wondering about this question the other day. It's 2018; we can make CPUs with 12nm features but we can't make a long lasting asphalt? Fascinating: Nichols said the AMIR “has great potential” to extend the life of roads, and “save significant taxpayer dollars.” In 2016, an MTO analysis found that the province would save $50 million annually if roads on the MTOs highways could last even one year longer.…
Florida native, I can tell you this is very temporary. Big chunks will eventually come up and you can see the previous pavement underneath. I'm assuming that between the heat here and the cracks mentioned in the original article that let water seep between the layers, this is just a bad way to fix a road.
I'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)?
You can impact road surface wear by tweaking any of these variables. They all affected the surface, there is no single cause.
The 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.
IMHO that just makes the difference it produces even more impressive, I thought this was a totally different paving machine.