![]() ![]() This is one of the biggest problems that we have in our industry, and we're looking at it very closely. And that's where - there's a lot of partnership between agencies and universities conducting a lot of research, looking at innovative materials, more environment-friendly materials, increasing the use of recycled materials and all of these techniques to combat this change in climatic conditions. ![]() RASCOE: But if temperatures keep rising, something will have to give, right?īHASIN: Yes. And if it fails, we again pay to fix it, right? So we're - we have to guess within a very narrow margin what we expect the future to be and design it there. So - and if we underdesign it, the system fails. And these are all - most of the roadways are primarily taxpayer-funded infrastructure. So it's not that we don't have the tools or solutions to design and solve these problems, but if we overdesign things, that also means excess cost. And the Middle East designs are going to push the envelope to have more and more engineered systems towards higher temperature if the temperature keeps going up. Texas designs are going to start looking like the Middle East. Wisconsin designs are going to start looking like Texas. I mean, it's not that we don't have the tools or technology. So what could be done to make infrastructure more heatproof?īHASIN: Oh, absolutely. RASCOE: There are places in the world that are really hot, you know, obviously, like Dubai, and they build all sorts of infrastructure. ![]() So those designs that were intended to handle a certain range are now slowly hitting their limits. Now, history is no guarantee of the future - right? - as we're breaking all kinds of records here. And if I want to be able to handle these extreme temperatures in this particular location, I'm going to design this material and this structure to be able to handle that and maybe depending on the reliability and importance, maybe a little bit more than that. Then you say, OK, these were my seven hottest days in the last 50 years, 100 years. So you go back and look at 50, 100 years of data. So in any design process, what we do is we take the local climatic condition, and we look at historical data. RASCOE: How hot do these surfaces have to get to start experiencing these sorts of issues?īHASIN: Yeah. Then the rod was - it's suddenly going to bend and buckle along its length. And so what happens is if the temperature goes higher than what it was designed for, then imagine a thin rod, and you press it from both ends inwards. Why does that happen?īHASIN: So it's, again, the same thing, right? If you go back to your high school physics, you remember that when you heat materials, they expand. RASCOE: I've seen pictures of train tracks that are twisted kind of like spaghetti. And when the traffic passes over it, those tires are going to rut into the pavement and create deformation and rutting and damage the pavement. And asphalt pavements - when you're talking about high temperatures, the problem with asphalt is that it becomes softer than what it is designed to be. It's going to start buckling up at the joints. I mean, we design it to handle this range of temperature.īut now, if I have much more than what I designed a slab for - in a jointed concrete, if you don't have that space for the concrete to expand, what's it going to do? It's going to push against each other. And because it expands, you need to accommodate that expansion somewhere in the pavement, right? So that is done either by providing joints or steel reinforcement and allowing very small cracks to occur and so forth. When the temperature goes up, it starts to expand. You, of course, use it for construction of buildings and so forth. are asphalt pavements, but there are also several significant highways and roadways that are concrete pavements. I'll be honest.īHASIN: And that's perfectly fine. And then don't start talking about cement. And I will admit - asphalt, concrete - I don't quite know the difference. RASCOE: So I hear there are two different types of roadways - asphalt and concrete - and they each have their own problems. Here to explain why this is happening is professor Amit Bhasin at the University of Texas at Austin. And we can expect more of the same as climate change brings higher temperatures around the globe. Last summer, high temperatures twisted railroad tracks outside San Francisco and caused an airport runway in England to seem to melt. This summer, interstate highways in Texas and Utah buckled, causing major traffic delays. Extreme heat is not kind to infrastructure. ![]()
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