The Prospect of Microwave Heating: Towards a Faster and Deeper Crack Healing in Asphalt Pavement

Shi Xu, Xueyan Liu, Amir Tabakovic, Erik Schlangen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

17 Citations (Scopus)
83 Downloads (Pure)

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.
Original languageEnglish
Article number507
Pages (from-to)1-11
Number of pages11
JournalProcesses
Volume9
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Keywords

  • Microwave heating
  • Porous asphalt
  • Self-healing asphalt
  • Semi-circular bending

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