A mechanical engineering professor at LSU may have a better mousetrap when it comes to filling potholes, inventing an asphalt sealant that behaves thermally opposite to physics.
Guoqiang Li’s asphalt sealant, which expands when concrete cools and shrinks when it’s hot, could potentially not only save the state’s roads from wear and tear but also money and time, according to an LSU announcement.
In 2016, Guoqiang founded Louisiana Multi-Functional Materials Group LLC with Lu Lu, a postdoctoral student serving as principal investigator and chief chemist, and Pengfei Zhang, a former Ph.D. student.
Sealants currently used to fix roads are primarily made of asphalt, rubber and rubber-modified asphalt, while Li and his team’s sealant is made with a two-way shape memory polymer with asphalt.
“The infrastructure in this country has been degrading,” Li says. “I hope our company or this technology will be able to play a role in improving it.”
Lab-scale testing for the product has finished and now must go through three rounds of approval in three states.
After the material is certified by the Texas Transportation Institute, the product will undergo a road test in Louisiana, where a truck will repeatedly run over the sealant on pavement for three months, equivalent to 20 years of wear and tear from traffic. Finally, the sealant will be evaluated on how well it performs in the cold temperatures of Minnesota.
Li hopes the approval process will be completed by the end of next year.
