By Callum Rhodes Volume 86 Number 10 October 2014 of Engineers Australia link: http://engineersaustraliamedia.realviewdigital.com/?iid=105260
GRT is in a new age of road construction and maintenance, with polymer soil stabilization technology increasing road lifespan and reducing construction times and impact, according to Dr Babak Abtahi, the recently appointed head of research and development at Australian firm Global Road Technology (GRT).
Abtahi, an Iranian engineer who received his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Sydney, said the new technologies brought several disciplines, including chemical and polymer engineering, together with civil engineering.
“For most people, when they think of roads, they traditionally think of gypsum, lime, fly ash, cement,” he said. Polymers used for soil stabilization and dust suppression, on the other hand, can be tailored to the requirements of a road’s design and the surrounding environment, and offer benefits in the road’s mechanical and material performance and environmental impact.
“Maintenance causes traffic delays, disturbance and pollution, and is lengthy and costly,” Abtahi said. “When we use polymers for soil stabilization, compared to traditional methods, we see longer road lifespans and lower maintenance cost. Just by using the polymers and tailoring them to the soil, we can see huge savings in time and money spent on maintenance.”
The technology improves the road’s resistance to erosion, ultraviolet light, water and thermal shock. “In countries like Finland and Norway, roads are exposed to widely varying temperatures, which is a major cause of failures,” Abtahi said. “ Polymers show good resistance to these kinds of failures because of their flexibility and the balance of their mechanical properties.”
Polymer technologies are already being used in infrastructure development, particularly in secondary and rural roads, for example in Africa, and there is also significant use of polymers in the USA, according to Abtahi.
“There is huge interest in this technology,” he said. “There is a complete transition happening from traditional forms to new ones.”
Abtahi’s background is in mechanical, material and polymer engineering, with the roads sector new territory for him.
“I’m currently trying to find the correlation between civil and chemical engineering terms, and trying to put them both in polymer engineering terms,” he said. “If you mention something like a compression test, that has two different meaning in civil and polymer engineering.”
Abtahi’s professional focus has previously been on fracture mechanics, and this has fed into his current field research into road structures.
“It’s sort of forensic,” he said. “If you have a failure, you have to work out if it’s in the soil, in the concrete, in the polymers. Then you go through tests to characterize the failure, and come back with formulations to fix it up.”
GRT, which specializes in soil stabilization and dust suppression technologies, is developing standards for internal use to facilitate its research and development efforts.
“We’re developing different polymers for different areas and soil types,” Abtahi said. “For that, we need internal standards to test those new formulations against.
“Beyond that, we’re always looking for formulations that deliver longer life, lower cost and better cost performance, and also with environmental performance in mind.”
For more information on Global Road Technology or the soil stabilization please go contact GRT
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