Self-healing asphalt: a moonshot project

Erik Schlangen has some problems with the current asphalt that makes up most of our roads. He says that the roads create lots of noise in populated cities where people live near heavy traffic areas. On rainy days there is a great deal of splashing when cars drive across them. His solution is to use a porous asphalt for road construction.

Porous roads would allow water to drain through the surfaces, running to the side of the road or routed into collection devices. Noise would disappear into the surface due to its geometry.

There are also disadvantages to a porous asphalt surface. Graveling is the main problem faced by the roads. Graveling can lead to potholes, loss of driver control and projectiles thrust into windshields.

Eric started with steel wool, cutting small pieces of the material and inserting it into the asphalt mix. Induction heating the mixture allows the steel wool amalgam to seep into the microcracks and create a stronger product.

The Dutch government took interest in Schlangen's project and donated four hundred meters of the A58 motorway for road testing. Samples from the road were tested in the lab to find the effects of aging, loading and environment. The samples were healed, then retested and then healed again.

Schlangen estimates that the large healing machine should go over each road every four years to double the surface life of the road. This TED talk is bookended by a demonstration where Erik takes a chunk of asphalt, breaks it with a hammer and then reassembles the pieces and placing them in a microwave. The demonstration is great and Schlangen is a very engaging and humorous speaker.