The results of a literally groundbreaking trial in the United Kingdom suggest that graphene-infused roads may pave the way into the future. According to Essex County officials, a pilot test outside of London indicates that lanes imbued with one of the world’s strongest known materials outperforms and outlasts traditional asphalt. The name of the new super-street combination? Gipave.
Road maintenance remains one of the most costly issues facing local, state, and federal governments. In 2021, an estimated $206 billion was spent on highway and street repairs. That’s nearly six percent of all available funds—and far from enough. According to Pew Research, the United States is also eyeing at least $105 billion in deferred upkeep projects.
One of the most recognizable and frequent problems is comparatively mundane. Cracks are inevitable in any road due to weakening materials and repeated stress over time. Once enough cars have sped over these fissures, chunks begin breaking off to create those infamous potholes that pop tires and ruin shocks. Aside from municipal patching costs, the average pothole-related vehicle repair is about $600, with car owners in the US collectively annually shelling out around $26.5 billion.
Asphalt is typically made from a mixture of stone aggregates held together with viscous, petroleum-based substance called bitumen. However, engineers recently began experimenting with adding the graphite-derived material graphene into the mix. First adopted commercially in the early 2000s, graphene is made from a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in honeycomb-like lattices, that make it incredibly resilient and superconductive. At one million times thinner than a single human hair, it’s also the thinnest known two-dimensional structure.
Graphene is already being harnessed in the manufacturing of electric batteries, semiconductors, and other products, but with 200 times the strength of steel, urban planners also see its potential as a construction additive. In 2022, Essex County announced plans to test asphalt combined with graphene to form a paving material called Gipave. Workers subsequently laid over 165 tons of Gipave for a lane on a new highway entrance road near London. They also added a second lane using traditional asphalt for a control. The Gipave was then exposed to thousands of car and truck tires throughout every season’s changing weather and temperatures over the next three years.
At the end of the experiment, third-party engineers extracted core samples from both lanes for lab testing and analysis. More specifically, they measured how much pressure it took to distort each dry sample, then tested them again after a 72-hour immersion in water. The graphene-enhanced asphalt performed 10 percent better in stiffness tests, as well as 20 percent better when it came to water sensitivity. They also noticed that when Gipave did fracture, it was the stone aggregate that cracked, and not the bitumen or bond between the two ingredients. This means the graphene truly strengthens the pavement’s overall resilience to make it a safer, likely more eco-friendly option.
If there is any immediately obvious weakness to Gipave, it’s the price tag. Engineers estimate it costs around 30 cents per square foot to use Gipave. Less than one dollar might not seem like a lot at first glance, but road repair costs increase exponentially. In the US, a single mile of four-lane highway contains a minimum of about 253,000 square feet. The nation contains about 4.2 million miles of highway, much of which is far wider than only four lanes. In this (extremely conservative) scenario, it would cost around $124.3 billion to repave all US highways with Gipave. Then again, simply starting to fill existing potholes with the graphene-strengthened asphalt would be a promising start.
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