Last day Alvaro at TU Delft

After 3 years working with great succes as a post-doc on the project Alvaro Garcia gave yesterday his final Seminar on the subject during the monthly Microlab-Colloquium. Now Alvaro will go for 1 month back to Spain. Not to rest after the hard work, but to walk for about 1000 km in Santiago de Compostela. After that he will continue his career at EMPA in Switzerland working on similar topics like material optimization and self healing of asphalt and concrete. We wish him all the best overthere, but we are sure we will stay in contact and will continue to have many discussion on our steelwool fibre asphalt.

RSAT plates under induction machine

The first RSAT plates from the road are tested this week at Brein (Heijmans) in Rosmalen and transfered to Delft to heat them with induction energy. In the picture below you see the laboratory setup for the heating with the induction machine and the infrared camera for measuring the temperature in the sample. In the small picture you see a screenshot of the computer showing the temerature in the sample. Next week we will do similar tests at SGS-Intron with the bigger version of the induction machine that will be used for the road.

Many applications of new asphalt

The new asphalt contains steelwool fibres. Magnets will stick to it. You can start thinking of many more applications. It can for instance hold buisiness cards or family pictures on your desk .....

Self Healing Asphalt in Technisch Weekblad

The 'Technisch Weekblad' published an article (in Dutch) on the self healing asphalt. Click on the image to read the article.

Asphalt core under induction machine

The image below shows an asphalt core (left) and the same core heated under the induction machine (right). The right photo is taken with our infrared camera. It can be clearly seen that the induction heating primarily heats up the bitumen (with the steel wool fibers) and not the aggregates. In the infrared image the aggregates are darker, which means the temperature is lower.

Core Drilling

Today the road was inspected and 120 cores have been drilled from the road. The road survived the cold days with ice and snow perfectly. No damage or even small cracks could be observed.








The cores will be tested in our lab. We will perform mechanical tests to measure the indirect tensile strength. The cores will be scanned in our CT-scanners to measure the fibre distribution. Part of the cores will be aged in the weather-o-meter and we will apply induction heating to the samples to test how fast heating is possible.


The results of the tests will be put on this blog when available,

Front cover of DCMat newsletter

The newsletter of the Delft Centre for Materials DCMat has also an article on our asphalt this month.


This is the link to the newsletter.

TU DELTA article on self healing highway

The weekly newspaper DELTA of Delft University published an article today on the self healing highway. Click here to read the article.

Asphalt core heated with induction energy

At the right you can see an asphalt core with steelwool fibers that is heated op to 120 oC under the induction machine in the laboratory. The image is taken with our infrared camera.

The team added

There is a new page added to the blog on which the people are introduced that are responsible for the development of this self healing asphalt.

Brochure on Self Healing Asphalt

Rijkswaterstaat (Dutch Government) published a brochure on self healing asphalt and roads. Our self healing asphalt with steelwool fibers is described in this report as one of the very good options. Another project we are working on now (also sposored by AgentschapNL) is the use of capsules filled with rejuvenator inside the bitumen. This project is also described in the brochure. You can download it here. The brochure is both in Dutch and in English. Happy reading.

Happy 2011

Fireworks on the asphalt.

Dutch News (NOS) item on asphalt quality today

The NOS TV-news chanel had an item today on the bad quality of the Dutch roads after the heavy snow and ice of the last weeks. Maybe our self healing asphalt is a solution.......?

Click here to see the news item (in Dutch).

Radio Interview RNW

click here to listen to the radio interview on Radio Netherlands Worldwide. It is in Dutch....

this should be history....

With the new self healing asphalt we should no longer get damaged windshields!
Car insurance companies should like this.

radio-interview for RNW

Last Friday (december 24) Erik was interviewed by RNW (Radio Netherlands Worldwide) on the application of the new Self Healing Asphalt. The interview will be broadcast this week (for details see http://www.rnw.nl/)

Merry Christmas from Delft

371 visitors in 4 days

The Blog is now 4 days in the air. It can not be found via Google yet, but still we have had 371 visitors from different countries. Below is the top 10 list.

Self Healing Asphalt on YouTube

Alvaro explains how it works on YouTube

Lab experiments in preparation

Of course we are not going to wait untill we get damage in the real asphalt on the road. Next to the test track an extensive research program is being prepared (sponsored by Rijkswaterstaat , the Ducth Government).
Tests that will be performed are ITS(R), bending, fatigue, RSAT, CT-scanning, nano-indentation, microscopy, etc. The tests will be done on virgin, artificialy aged and on healed specimens.

The pictures show the setup and specimens for the RSAT test that is developed and will be used by partner Heijmans. This test gives a very good indication of the performance of the new asphalt against raveling.

How the Self Healing Works:

In the new asphalt that is developed in this project small steelwol fibers are mixed in the bitumen. After some time (probably a few years or after a strong winter like we have now) when small microcracks occur in the bitumen and when the aggregates in the asphalt mix at the surface start to debond, the steelwool fibers are heated with induction energy. By heating up the fibers the bitumen will melt and close the cracks and repair the bond with the aggregates. It is important not to apply too much heating, because that would close all the pores in the porous asphalt.

The induction technique will be further developed and optimized in this project bij partner INTRON.

Conference on Self Healing Materials

From 27-29 June 2011 the Third International Conference on Self Healing Materials will be organised in Bath, UK.





for more info check the website

now it is time to send in abstracts

Self Healing Materials on Dutch TV

If you would like to know more about self healing materials you should watch the TV-program "HET KLOKHUIS" tomorrow evening on the "Nederland 3" from
18:25 to 18:40. They will show the development of Self Healing Polymers

for more info look at the site of AgentschapNL

or look at the site of "Het Klokhuis". There you can also watch it on internet later, in case you missed it.

CT-scan of new asphalt

To check the distribution of fibers in the asphalt we put some samples in our CT-scanner. This gives the nice images below.

mechanism of raveling

The picture below gives a schematic represenation of raveling: