So roads and bridges will last longer and need less maintenance work that ties up traffic in knots and annoys drivers. The strong, corrosion-resistant materials also will make most potholes, the bane of Ohio drivers, a dismal memory. Associate chemical engineering professor Kurt Koelling and assistant mechanical engineering professor Tony Luscher are associate directors.
Optimization cuts manufacturing costs, boosts productivity and enhances product quality.
Performance and cost efficiency of composites also must get better, through more research, before they'll replace concrete, steel and aluminum used in transportation construction projects, said Dr. Mac Puckett, Dow Chemical's development leader for composite applications. It will take 15 years before these start being used in the roads, although there's some experimentation going on now. Rehabilitating bridges now gobbles up big chunks of time partly because large, slow-moving equipment is needed to put steel girders and other heavyweight structural components into place, Puckett said. Using lighter polymer composite components, smaller equipment will do the same thing much faster. In cold climates, this could extend deck life by at least 50 percent.