ITA designs road surface of textile-reinforced plastic

May 23, 2019 - Germany

ITA with its partners has designed a new road surface layer which is made of textile-reinforced plastic. The research was part of the BMBF project "InnoPave - Innovative Pavement". Commercially available Aasphalt road pavements have an average service life of eight years. Extensive laboratory tests indicate service life of more than 80 years for InnoPave.

InnoPave was able to deliver excellent measurement results in extensive laboratory tests, which indicate a service life of more than 80 years.

The partners involved in the project are the ISAC and IFAM institutes at RWTH Aachen University and the industrial partners Huesker Group (Gescher), Evonik (Essen), Limburger Lackfabrik (Diez), ADM-ISOBLOC (Brüggen), Wirtgen (Windhagen) and the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt).

Together with Huesker, the ITA developed the textile reinforcement for the plastic top layer. The textile reinforcement absorbs the tensile forces generated during cornering and braking manoeuvres, especially by fully loaded trucks (maximum load).

The "HighTechMatBau" funding initiative supported several innovative research projects on the use of so-called "high-tech materials" in the construction industry. InnoPave is one of them. The project was funded by BMBF. The installation of the test track was carried out in March 2019 in Cologne. The duraBASt is the BASt's demonstration, investigation and reference area and enables research projects to install test tracks on an old, closed-off motorway section on a real scale. (SV)