0:00:37.295,0:00:40.119 (Hammer) 0:00:43.184,0:00:47.218 (Laughter) 0:01:04.076,0:01:10.000 (Microwave beeps) (Laughter) 0:01:15.696,0:01:17.721 You probably all agree with me 0:01:17.721,0:01:20.496 that this is a very nice road. 0:01:20.496,0:01:22.655 It's made of asphalt, 0:01:22.655,0:01:25.889 and asphalt is a very nice material to drive on, 0:01:25.889,0:01:30.023 but not always, especially not on these days as today, 0:01:30.023,0:01:31.874 when it's raining a lot. 0:01:31.874,0:01:34.822 Then you can have a lot of splash water in the asphalt. 0:01:34.822,0:01:37.116 And especially if you then ride with your bicycle, 0:01:37.116,0:01:41.061 and pass these cars, then that's not very nice. 0:01:41.061,0:01:44.171 Also, asphalt can create a lot of noise. 0:01:44.171,0:01:45.785 It's a noisy material, 0:01:45.785,0:01:48.229 and if we produce roads like in the Netherlands, 0:01:48.229,0:01:52.361 very close to cities, then we would like a silent road. 0:01:52.361,0:01:55.630 The solution for that is to make roads 0:01:55.630,0:01:57.807 out of porous asphalt. 0:01:57.807,0:01:59.798 Porous asphalt, a material that we use now 0:01:59.798,0:02:02.757 in most of the highways in the Netherlands, 0:02:02.757,0:02:06.201 it has pores and water can just rain through it, 0:02:06.201,0:02:09.102 so all the rainwater will flow away to the sides, 0:02:09.102,0:02:11.191 and you have a road that's easy to drive on, 0:02:11.191,0:02:13.121 so no splash water anymore. 0:02:13.121,0:02:16.283 Also the noise will disappear in these pores. 0:02:16.283,0:02:19.306 Because it's very hollow, all the noise will disappear, 0:02:19.306,0:02:21.894 so it's a very silent road. 0:02:21.894,0:02:25.439 It also has disadvantages, of course, 0:02:25.439,0:02:29.601 and the disadvantage of this road is that raveling can occur. 0:02:29.601,0:02:32.526 What is raveling? You see that in this road 0:02:32.526,0:02:35.147 that the stones at the surface come off. 0:02:35.147,0:02:40.425 First you get one stone, then several more, 0:02:40.425,0:02:42.167 and more and more and more and more, 0:02:42.167,0:02:45.734 and then they -- well, I will not do that. (Laughter) 0:02:45.734,0:02:48.648 But they can damage your windshield, 0:02:48.648,0:02:50.438 so you're not happy with that. 0:02:50.438,0:02:54.428 And finally, this raveling can also lead to more and more damage. 0:02:54.428,0:02:57.044 Sometimes you can create potholes with that. 0:02:57.044,0:03:01.105 Ha. He's ready. 0:03:01.105,0:03:04.290 Potholes, of course, that can become a problem, 0:03:04.290,0:03:05.833 but we have a solution. 0:03:05.833,0:03:09.091 Here you see actually how the damage appears in this material. 0:03:09.091,0:03:11.091 It's a porous asphalt, like I said, so you have only 0:03:11.091,0:03:13.863 a small amount of binder between the stones. 0:03:13.863,0:03:17.182 Due to weathering, due to U.V. light, due to oxidation, 0:03:17.182,0:03:19.910 this binder, this bitumen, 0:03:19.910,0:03:22.583 the glue between the aggregates is going to shrink, 0:03:22.583,0:03:24.528 and if it shrinks, it gets micro-cracks, 0:03:24.528,0:03:26.250 and it delaminates from the aggregates. 0:03:26.250,0:03:28.810 Then if you drive over the road, you take out the aggregates -- 0:03:28.810,0:03:31.806 what we just saw here. 0:03:31.806,0:03:35.620 To solve this problem, we thought of self-healing materials. 0:03:35.620,0:03:38.281 If we can make this material self-healing, 0:03:38.281,0:03:41.474 then probably we have a solution. 0:03:41.474,0:03:46.068 So what we can do is use steel wool just to clean pans, 0:03:46.068,0:03:49.553 and the steel wool we can cut in very small pieces, 0:03:49.553,0:03:53.457 and these very small pieces we can mix to the bitumen. 0:03:53.457,0:03:55.202 So then you have asphalt 0:03:55.202,0:03:58.269 with very small pieces of steel wool in it. 0:03:58.269,0:04:01.060 Then you need a machine, like you see here, 0:04:01.060,0:04:04.199 that you can use for cooking -- an induction machine. 0:04:04.199,0:04:08.248 Induction can heat, especially steel; it's very good at that. 0:04:08.248,0:04:10.930 Then what you do is you heat up the steel, 0:04:10.930,0:04:12.421 you melt the bitumen, 0:04:12.421,0:04:14.987 and the bitumen will flow into these micro-cracks, 0:04:14.987,0:04:18.194 and the stones are again fixed to the surface. 0:04:18.194,0:04:22.156 Today I use a microwave because I cannot take 0:04:22.156,0:04:24.393 the big induction machine here onstage. 0:04:24.393,0:04:27.273 So a microwave is a similar system. 0:04:27.273,0:04:30.918 So I put the specimen in, which I'm now going to take out 0:04:30.918,0:04:34.170 to see what happened. 0:04:34.170,0:04:36.663 So this is the specimen coming out now. 0:04:36.663,0:04:41.056 So I said we have such an industrial machine in the lab 0:04:41.056,0:04:43.328 to heat up the specimens. 0:04:43.328,0:04:45.418 We tested a lot of specimens there, 0:04:45.418,0:04:48.593 and then the government, they actually saw our results, 0:04:48.593,0:04:52.543 and they thought, "Well, that's very interesting. We have to try that." 0:04:52.543,0:04:54.859 So they donated to us a piece of highway, 0:04:54.859,0:04:58.346 400 meters of the A58, where we had to make 0:04:58.346,0:05:00.856 a test track to test this material. 0:05:00.856,0:05:04.388 So that's what we did here. You see where we were making the test road, 0:05:04.388,0:05:08.886 and then of course this road will last several years 0:05:08.886,0:05:12.174 without any damage. That's what we know from practice. 0:05:12.174,0:05:14.953 So we took a lot of samples from this road 0:05:14.953,0:05:17.222 and we tested them in the lab. 0:05:17.222,0:05:20.139 So we did aging on the samples, 0:05:20.139,0:05:23.751 did a lot of loading on it, healed them with our induction machine, 0:05:23.751,0:05:26.577 and healed them and tested them again. 0:05:26.577,0:05:28.481 Several times we can repeat that. 0:05:28.481,0:05:30.706 So actually, the conclusion from this research is that 0:05:30.706,0:05:34.024 if we go on the road every four years 0:05:34.024,0:05:36.904 with our healing machine -- this is the big version 0:05:36.904,0:05:38.809 we have made to go on the real road -- 0:05:38.809,0:05:40.679 if we go on the road every four years 0:05:40.679,0:05:44.429 we can double the surface life of this road, 0:05:44.429,0:05:46.606 which of course saves a lot of money. 0:05:46.606,0:05:48.783 Well, to conclude, I can say 0:05:48.783,0:05:51.539 that we made a material 0:05:51.539,0:05:55.319 using steel fibers, the addition of steel fibers, 0:05:55.319,0:05:57.828 using induction energy to really 0:05:57.828,0:06:00.495 increase the surface life of the road, 0:06:00.495,0:06:02.245 double the surface life you can even do, 0:06:02.245,0:06:05.909 so it will really save a lot of money with very simple tricks. 0:06:05.909,0:06:09.382 And now you're of course curious if it also worked. 0:06:09.382,0:06:12.485 So we still have the specimen here. It's quite warm. 0:06:12.485,0:06:15.064 Actually, it still has to cool down first 0:06:15.064,0:06:17.404 before I can show you that the healing works. 0:06:17.404,0:06:20.272 But I will do a trial. 0:06:20.272,0:06:23.031 Let's see. Yeah, it worked. 0:06:23.031,0:06:24.381 Thank you. 0:06:24.381,0:06:29.797 (Applause)