Towards Smart, Resilient, Sustainable, and Adaptable Pavements - Application on High-Performance Asphalt Materials

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The transportation system of a country has the same importance that the arteries, veins, and nerves have to the human body. Canada has a well-developed transportation system consisting of road, rail, water, and air networks. However, the road network is the most important as 90% of all goods are transported via trucks. Nationwide, Canada has over a million km of road with over 30,000 km of highways [39]. The road has evolved over the years with the evolution of humanity. In the recent decades, the road industry has positively changed to meet the needs of sustainable development and cost reduction. Meanwhile, the technological evolution in other transportation-related industries has been spectacular. Therefore, today's road would be lagging technological, economic, environmental, and societal evolutions if the road industry misses the high technological speed train towards the future. Several international experts started working on redefining the road of the future. This road would be sustainable, resilient, connected, adaptable, self-healing, source of energy, smart and versatile. The ideas proposed for this research program would contribute to the efforts towards the road of the future. In Canada, cracking is the most prevalent deterioration modes of pavements. Cracking is caused by traffic loading and low temperature and can be accelerated by asphalt aging. The current proposal investigates three breakthrough ideas to advance new solutions that will effectively extend the service life of pavements. Some of these innovations are inspired by the human body, specifically its capacity to adapt, evolve and self-heal. The program will leverage nature-inspired strategies to create a range of High-Performance Asphalt Mixes (HPAM). The use of Self-Healing Materials, and antioxidants continues to be explored to reduce the risk of pavement cracking. Advances in nanotechnology will also be leveraged to modify the molecular structure of the binder and formulate high-performance mastics using nanomaterials issued from the nature or form recycling. Advanced characterization and evaluation techniques to better characterize HPAM and Self-Healing will be developed. The experimental design will account for climate change considerations to ensure the created solution will be efficient and resilient under extreme climatic conditions. The program will contribute to train a new generation of highly technically qualified researchers and engineers who are sensitive to sustainable development and major environmental issues, such as climate change. Twenty-one graduate and undergraduate students will have the opportunity to develop scientific technical knowledge and skills on the different aspects of pavement materials engineering and design, in a diverse, equitable and inclusive research environment. In the future, these students will contribute, with other peers, to lead the change towards smarter and more sustainable road infrastructures in Canada and worldwide.