Piezo-Powered Self-Healing Roads

Aditi Gokhale

J. Ackerman Coles Elementary School, Scotch Plains, NJ

 

First Place, Grades 3-5
Engineering for Your Community Essay Contest, 2018

January 31, 2018

To

The Scotch Plains City Council
430 Park Avenue
Scotch Plains, NJ 07076

Dear Mayor Smith and Members of the Scotch Plains City Council,

        I have lived with my mom and dad in Scotch Plains for the past two years and we think this is a wonderful place to live. I think our town could be even better if we had nicer roads. Recently, I was with my family and we were going to the grocery store. Suddenly, my mom’s car got a flat tire. When the AAA truck came, they told us that potholes in the street can cause accidents.

        When we got home I did a bit of research and found out that potholes are a big problem all over New Jersey. In fact, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 38% of our roads need repair. Our roads were built in 1950s and today they have reached the end of their useful life. Bad roads cost an average driver in NJ $1951 every year. That is why, ASCE’s infrastructure report gave NJ’s roads a D+. I think that is embarrassing. Scotch Plains has some good roads, and some have been recently repaved. But many roads like Cooper Road, Rahway Road, Raritan Road, and parts of US-22 are in poor shape.

        Cracks are formed in the roads due to wear and tear. Potholes are caused when these cracks expand, many times when water freezes into ice during winter. So, if there was a way to fill in the cracks as soon as they were formed, we will be able to avoid the issue of potholes. I wanted to find ways of doing this and so I researched self-healing roads. I found that Dr. Schlangen at Delft University in The Netherlands is working on self-healing asphalt. This is the same material that we use for roads today. He added steel wool and bitumen into the asphalt. Bitumen melts when heated by passing electricity through the steel wool. After melting, it flows into cracks to repair them.

        Dr. Schlangen wants to move a strong magnet over the road to create an electric current in the steel wool. A big problem with this idea is that the magnet would need to be placed over the cracks for more than 3 hours for them to heal. I think, it would be hard to have strong magnets on the road for that long as they might start affecting cars and other steel objects in the neighborhood.

        My idea involves improving Dr. Schlangen’s idea using piezoelectricity. When certain crystals like quartz vibrate or are compressed, they produce electricity, and this is called piezoelectricity. I think when the cars drive over cracks in roads they will produce a lot of vibration and this will give a strong current. This current could be used for melting the bitumen to fill the cracks. With the cracks filled we will never have to worry about potholes.

        I read that the cost of constructing the road is about 25% more using Dr. Schlangen’s idea. But the roads would also last for 80 years rather than 50 years. Also, using piezoelectricity could make it costlier. I think we might have to spend another 25% more for building these new roads. However, cars traveling on these roads without cracks will also keep generating piezoelectricity. We can use this electricity for streetlights and for lighting all the city buildings. This will save the city money and so pay for the higher cost of the roads.

        Using piezoelectricity is beneficial but would require many types of engineers like, electrical and electronic engineers to design the piezoelectricity circuits. Materials engineers would guide us on the right piezoelectric crystals. We would need mechanical engineers and civil engineers to design the roads. Finally, we would need good systems engineers and computer engineers for programming the use of electricity for lighting vs. repairing roads.

        If we get all such engineers together, we will be able to build better roads with self-healing asphalt. By powering the roads by piezoelectricity, we will ensure that they last for a long time and also pay for themselves.