Photo: PatternPictures | Pixabay
A team of researchers at Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University has come up with an eco-friendly solution that can protect roads from the harsh rays of the sun. The method involves adding crumb rubber from scrap tires to the road recipe; the method addresses both the environmental impacts of road maintenance and the waste problem of discarded tires. "We found adding between 18 percent and 22 percent of crumb rubber generates an ideal balance in terms of improving rut and fatigue resistance to traffic loads while resisting UV aging," said study lead author Filippo Giustozzi. "This acts so effectively as a sunscreen for roads that it actually makes the surface last twice as long as regular bitumen. We knew that UV would be a factor in road degradation, but not by what degree or how to protect against it, as nobody has really been looking at this aspect."
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