E-Paper
Indian-origin Canadian professor tests self-repairing road in Karnataka
TORONTO: In recent months, Nemkumar Banthia, professor at the department of civil engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC), has had his eyes fixed
TORONTO: In recent months, Nemkumar Banthia, professor at the department of civil engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC), has had his eyes fixed on a road that happens to be over 12,500 km from Vancouver, where he is based.
The road — which is a demonstration project at Thondebavi village, about 90 km from Bengaluru — boasts of advanced materials and technology that can help improve rural road connectivity.
The project is the result of research that marries materials science and structural engineering to create self-repairing roads that are cost effective, have greater longevity and are sustainable.
Banthia, who graduated from IIT-Delhi before moving to Canada 34 years ago, undertook the project under the auspices of the Canada-India Research Center of Excellence IC-IMPACTS, where he is scientific director.
In 2014, Banthia’s team selected Thondebavi village for the project after a series of interactions with gram pan ch a ya tm embers and the local community.
As part of the project, the road — which connects Thondebavi to the highway and replaces a dilapidated dirt track — was completed late in 2015, but the last few months were critical as it had to be monitored for how it lasted through the extreme heat of an Indian summer and the monsoon. Now, it can be claimed a success.
The road’s thickness, at about 100mm, is about 60% less than that of a typical Indian road, reducing cost and materials. About 60% of the cement is replaced with fly ash, thus curbing the usual carbon footprint, especially as cement production releases greenhouse gases. It comes with built-in crack healing, as high strength concrete is supplemented with fibre reinforcement with nano-coating that makes it absorb water and keeps the road hydrated.
Describing this as a“cute mechanism ”, Ban thia said ,“These are fibres which have a hydrophilic nano-coating ont hem. Hydrophilia means they attract water and this water then becomes available for crackhealing. Everytime you have a crack, you always have unhydrated cement and this water is now giving it the hydration capability, producing further silicates which actually closes the crack in time.”
Also, native drainage prevents the village from turning into a marshland as it often did during monsoon months.
Banthia, originally from Nagpur, said he expected the road to last about 15 years, far beyond the two-year lifespan of the average rural or mid-town road in India. It’s also 30% cheaper in terms of a first time cost, though the savings, he said, would be substantial over its life cycle.
Villagers, he said, have taken to the new road, since it connects each of the hamlet’s 1,200 residents, and allows them to take their produce to market easily.
