Document Type
Article
Rights
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence
Disciplines
Polymer science, Civil engineering, Materials engineering
Abstract
Microwave heating has been shown to be an effective method of heating asphalt concrete and in turn healing the damage. As such, microwave heating holds great potential in rapid (1–3 min) and effective damage healing, resulting in improvement in the service life, safety, and sustainability of asphalt pavement. This study focused on the microwave healing effect on porous asphalt concrete. Steel wool fibres were incorporated into porous asphalt to improve the microwave heating efficiency, and the optimum microwave heating time was determined. Afterwards, the microwave healing efficiency was evaluated using a semi–circular bending and healing programme. The results show that the microwave healing effect is largely determined by the steel fibre content and the mix design of the porous asphalt concrete.. Besides, the uneven heating effect of microwave contributes to an unstable damage recovery in the asphalt mixture, which makes it less efficient than induction heating. However, microwaves exhibited the ability to penetrate further into the depth of the test specimen and heat beneath the surface, indicating deeper damage recovery prospects.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/pr9030507
Recommended Citation
Xu, S., Liu, X. & Tabakovic, A. (2021). The prospect of microwave heating: towards a faster and deeper crack healing in asphalt pavement. Processes 9(3), 507. doi:10.3390/pr9030507
Publication Details
MDPI Processes as part of the Special Issue Advances in Self-Healing Asphalt Technology