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The self-healing road

humansinvent.com

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Re: The self-healing road

#2

Post by jandy »

That's pretty cool, but "self healing" is a bit misleading.

It's not very self healing when it requires somebody to drive along with a vehicle that would heat up the road to fix it. That's like saying all current roads are self-healing because they just require someone to drive along and fill in the holes.

Still cool though, easier to repair roads are always good.

Re: The self-healing road

#3

Post by hakaaaaak »

jandy wrote: post #2

That's pretty cool, but "self healing" is a bit misleading. It's not very self healing when it requires somebody to drive along with a vehicle that would heat up the road to fix it. That's like saying all current roads are self-healing because they just require someone to drive along and fill in the holes. Still cool though, easier to repair roads are always good.

Maybe they should call it a "more durable road".

Re: The self-healing road

#4

Post by Cthulhu_ »

hakaaaaak wrote: post #3
jandy wrote: post #2

That's pretty cool, but "self healing" is a bit misleading. It's not very self healing when it requires somebody to drive along with a vehicle that would heat up the road to fix it. That's like saying all current roads are self-healing because they just require someone to drive along and fill in the holes. Still cool though, easier to repair roads are always good.

Maybe they should call it a "more durable road".

It's not more durable, it's easier to patch up. Simply said, this technique allows maintenance workers to heat the bitumen up uniformly, allowing it to flow and fix its own small cracks and brittleness, and avoiding larger damages over time.

Re: The self-healing road

#5

Post by batiste »

Very smart. The cost of maintaining roads in cold countries is crazy. This technique should bring substantial savings. Or an incentive to have better roads as it's cheaper to maintain.

Re: The self-healing road

#7

Post by speeder »

Too bad this would be useless here in Brazil, in fact MORE useless...

Here I've seen many times asphalt with objects embedded on it (usually bottle caps), because many places in Brazil get hot enough to asphalt partially melt, this technology here would be REALLY self-healing.

The problem is, asphalt that is very cheap to fix, and more durable, or cheaper in long term, is not interesting, because it means less money to steal, in Brazil everyone knows that the purpose of roads is steal public money, not to use, this is why every road or is full of holes, or full of patches.

Typical brazillian road: http://postagemteste.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/03.jpg

Re: The self-healing road

#9

Post by Retric »

jandy wrote: post #2

That's pretty cool, but "self healing" is a bit misleading. It's not very self healing when it requires somebody to drive along with a vehicle that would heat up the road to fix it. That's like saying all current roads are self-healing because they just require someone to drive along and fill in the holes. Still cool though, easier to repair roads are always good.

Bumping that durability up from 8 to 16 years even with some maintenance is probably a net win, but it seems a long way from the 40+ years you can get from concrete.
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