Road traffic density has continued to grow every year resulting in an increased number of road failures. In the case of roadway maintenance, it has not always been possible to succeed in meeting all technological requirements for durable and quality repairs. These are the main reasons for the formation of asphalt surface failures – potholes, which make the traffic on land roads complicated and increase the risk of traffic accidents. The road maintenance organization face the problem of increasing number of kilometres of roads in non-satisfactory condition and limited budget. Described situation opens the opportunity for preventive approach in road maintenance in order to lower the life-cycle costs of road infrastructure.
FUTTEC have developed a new technology for durable asphalt road repairs based on microwave technology. The crucial advantage of FUTTEC´s technology lies in seamless repair of potholes, while pothole surrounding is heated up by microwave machine FT3 and the pothole is filled by hot asphalt repair mixture and afterwards compacted. Asphalt heated to 145 °C has plastic properties and can be ideally joined with repair mixture without any seam, which is the cause of future failure, because it is the place, where water leak in and during winter freezes and break the asphalt layer.
The overall project objective is to introduce to European market a new highly competitive microwave machine, which will enable new approach in road maintenance. Using the microwave system, the preventive maintenance is possible, which could change the way of how the roads are maintained. The idea is to save money on preventive approach, while highly durable repair should be done right after the failure is identify in order to prevent costly overall reconstruction and extend the lifespan of road infrastructure.
During the project implementation a prototype of a new machine FT4 was developed. Compared to the previous model, the FT4 machine has more than 5 times higher power output enabling heating of asphalt surface in less than 10 minutes even in winter temperatures. That represents main achievement of the project. It was highly challenging to completely redesigned the whole machine, but the final result in the form of FT4 offers far more superior features to our customers than the previous model. The FT4 greatly speed up the repair process resulting in increased rentability of the machine for our customers.
