06 – Smart Transport Alliance (STA) Annual Conference, Brussels – Belgium, Tuesday 27th November

Figure 1. hey, watch out.! post in progress 😉

Hello word...!!

On this occasion, I will be writing a short post about the session that we, SMARTI ETN group, had last November (2018) in Brussels under the Smart Transport Alliance (STA) Annual Conference. As usual, I will start by giving a general overview of what STA is and does. The Smart Transportation Alliance is a not-for-profit global collaborative platform for transportation infrastructure innovation across modes and the Smart City. It was founded in December 2014 with headquarters in Brussels (Belgium) and meets every year; technical round-tables and training workshops are also organized by STA but with non-specific time frame. Finally, it should be highlighted that STA focus on providing smart infrastructure to connect people and business in a safe and sustainable way acknowledging that infrastructure competes with other important aspects of the public budget.

During our group presentation, each of the 15-fellows had 5-minutes to pitch their project to the audience. Below you can find my scrip and presentation. 

Figure 2. SmartEcoPave pitch

“We all make assumptions. We do it all the time. These assumptions can be about pretty much anything. Some assumptions are trivial and other are potentially devastating. Assumptions are guess based on three things: our imagination, past experience or wishful thinking; the problem with making assumptions is that more often than not, we are wrong and therefore, a lot of damage can be done by confusing our assumptions with the truth.

Pavement engineering has been driven by making assumptions since its origins. In 1876, Boussinesq introduced his method for homogeneous half space. In 1943 and 1945, Burmister developed a solution to calculate stresses and displacements in a two and three layer pavement system, respectively. Finally, in 1949 Odemark developed an approximate method to calculate stresses and strains in multilayer pavement systems. Nowadays, end of 2018, we (Pavement Engineers) are still making assumptions. In terms of designing a new pavement, we assume about the pavement model, the layer properties, travel speed, loading, climate, permissible stresses and strains, transfer functions and as a result, we will obtain the assumed future performance. What this really means is that we simply do not know what is happening with our structure. Generally, pavement design focus on two parameters, longitudinal strain at the bottom of the asphalt and the vertical strain at the top of the subgrade. I am going to talk about the longitudinal strain at the bottom of the asphalt. It is known that low strains are indicators of a good condition and vice-versa right? Most of the time we even prove these hypotheses in the laboratory and we felt like our design will last its design period. Unfortunately, this rarely occur in reality and the reason why is because we do not know how strains evolve with time but we could not know if we only have two points.

What if I tell you know that the scatter between the assumptions made at the office and the real pavement responses could be reduced? My name is Mario Manosalvas Paredes, I work for University of Nottingham and within my research project, we are studying a new type of low-cost battery less piezoelectric sensor that could measure and storage the longitudinal strain over time allowing pavement engineers either to validate their designs or to correct initial assumptions. We believe that once our sensor has been embedded in the asphalt, we will understand what is the real trend of the longitudinal strain and as a results of that, we will be able to determine the real performance of the structure.

Understanding whether or not our pavement will perform based onto our initial assumptions is not the ultimate goal that this project has. However, it is the fundamental one. Programming maintenance events based on the actual performance of the pavement and not just in time will allow road owners to allocate their budgets wiser. Thank you.!

I hope you liked the scrip guys. Stay tuned and see you soon pavement lovers!

Mario Manosalvas Paredes.