Drivers traveling on a nearly mile-long section of SH 205 in Rockwall wouldn’t notice anything unique about the asphalt, but what’s underneath the surface could change the way roadways are built in the future.
For the first time, the Texas Department of Transportation is testing an innovative, plastic-infused asphalt on one of its highways, thanks to a team of engineers at UT Arlington. The hope is to address two major problems at once: mounting plastic waste and failing infrastructure.
“We have a road network that’s deteriorating,” said Dr. Sahadat Hossain, a professor of civil engineering at UTA and the director of the Solid Waste Institute for Sustainability. “So we are using plastic in building the road. We are taking one problem to solve another problem. And this is the perfect example of sustainability.”
TxDOT is evaluating how well the plastic-infused asphalt performs under real traffic and brutal summer temperatures, conditions students at UTA have been simulating in a lab for six years…