RESEARCH ARTICLE
A Protection of the Environment Through the Prevention of Surface Cracking
Abd El Halim Omar Abd El Halim*, 1, Dalia Said1, Abdelzaher Mostafa2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 3
First Page: 7
Last Page: 15
Publisher ID: TOCIEJ-3-7
DOI: 10.2174/1874149500903010007
Article History:
Received Date: 12/6/2008Revision Received Date: 7/10/2008
Acceptance Date: 21/10/2008
Electronic publication date: 6/1/2009
Collection year: 2009
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
One of the main objectives of the top asphalt layer is to provide a protective surface against water penetration and other harmful liquids such as chemicals. However, current construction equipments do not provide finished asphalt surfaces that meet this quality and therefore, allowing the intrusion of several liquids through the asphalt layers and deeper into the underlying soils. Subsequently, the result is often polluted soils and possibly seepage of the chemicals to rivers and underground water endangering the environment, plants, animals and ultimately humans. Results of recent research proved that current steel drum rollers induce surface cracks that provide path for surface water to intrude into the pavement layer. The development of a new compactor, asphalt multi-integrated roller (AMIR), produces asphalt layers with tight surface texture which demonstrate very low values of permeability when compared with similar asphalt compactor using current rollers. The results of field measurements of permeability on four asphalt sections compactor using AMIR and steel rollers showed that AMIR compacted surfaces will significantly improve the tightness of the surface and will reduce the permeability by a factor of up to 10 to 1, when compared with measured permeability on surfaces compacted using steel rollers. The results are used to discuss the role of better compaction in the protection of the environment and reduction of possible harmful pollution of water and soils.
