WEBVTT

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(Crackling)

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(Thud)

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(Laughter)

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(Microwave beeping)

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You probably all agree with me
that this is a very nice road.

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It's made of asphalt.

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Asphalt is a very nice material 
to drive on.

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But, not always,
especially not on days as today,

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when it's raining a lot.

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Then you have a lot of splashing 
water on the asphalt,

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and especially if you ride 
your bicycle and cars pass you,

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then that's not very nice.

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Also, asphalt can create 
a lot of noise.

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It's a noisy material,

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and if we build roads,
like in the Netherlands,

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very close to cities, 
then we would like a quiet road.

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We have solutions for that.

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The solution for that is 
to make roads out of porous asphalt.

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Porous asphalt material 
that we use now

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in most of the highways
in the Netherlands,

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it has pores, and water 
can just rain through it,

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like you see in this image.

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So all the rain water
will flow away to the side,

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and you have a road easy to drive on,

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so no splashing water anymore.

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Also the noise will disappear
into these pores,

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because it's very hollow,
all the noise will disappear,

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so it's a very silent road.

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It also has disadvantages, of course.

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A disadvantage of this road
is that reveling can occur.

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What is reveling?

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You see that in this road 
the stones at the surface come off.

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So what actually happens,
first you get one stone,

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then several more,

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and more, and more, and more,

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and then they --

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I will not do that.

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(Laughter)

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But they can damage your windshield,

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so you're not happy with that.

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Finally, this reveling can also lead
to more and more damage

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like you see in the next image,

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sometimes you can create 
potholes with that.

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(Microwave beeping)

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Hah, it's ready.

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Potholes, of course, 
can become a problem.

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But we have a solution.

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Here you can see how the damage
appears in this material.

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It's a porous asphalt, like I said,

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there is only a small amount 
of binder between the stones,

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and this binder, 
due to weathering, due to UV light,

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due to oxidation, 
this binder, this bitumen,

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the glue between the aggregates
is going to shrink.

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And if it shrinks, it gets microcracks,

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and it delaminates from the aggregates,

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and then if you drive over the road

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you kick out the aggregates,
which we just saw here.

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To solve this problem,
we thought of self-healing materials.

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If you can make these materials
self-healing,

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then probably, we have a solution.

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So what we do is use steel wool,

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used to clean pans,
like you see in the picture,

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and the steel wool we can cut 
into very small pieces,

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and these very small pieces,
we can mix into the bitumen.

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Then you have asphalt with 
very small pieces of steel wool in it.

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Then you need a machine,
like you see here,

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that is used for cooking,
an induction machine.

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Induction can heat especially steel,
it's very good at that.

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And then what you do is you melt --

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you heat up the steel,
you melt the bitumen,

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and the bitumen will flow
into these microcracks,

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and the stones are again
fixed to the surface.

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Today I used a microwave,

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because I cannot bring the big 
induction machine to heat on the stage,

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so I microwaved, it's a similar system.

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So I put the specimen in,
which I'm going to take out

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to see what happened.

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I need my gloves again.

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This is the specimen coming out now.

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We have such an industrial 
machine in the lab,

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to heat up the specimens.

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We tested a lot of specimens there,

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and then the government,
they actually saw our results,

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and they thought,

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Well, that's very interesting.
We have to try that.

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So they donated to us 
a piece of highway,

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400 meters of the A58,
close to Vilssingen,

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where we had to make
a test track to test this material.

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So that's what we did here, you see 
where we're making the test road,

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and then, of course,
this road will last several years,

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without any damage,
that's what we know from practice.

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So we took a lot of samples
from this road,

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and we tested them in the lab.

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So we did aging on the samples,

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did a lot of loading on it,

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healed them with our induction machine,

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healed them, tested them again.

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Again broke them, healed them, 
several times we can repeat that.

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So actually the conclusion 
from this research is that

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if you go on the road every 
4-years with our heating machine--

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this is the big version we have made 
to go on the real road --

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if you go on the road every 4-years

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we can double the service life 
of this road,

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which, of course, 
saves a lot of money.

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To conclude, I can say 
that we made a material

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using steel fibers,
additional steel fibers,

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and using induction energy,

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to really increase
the service life of the road,

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even double the service life,

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really save a lot of money
with very simple tricks.

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And now you're of course 
curious if it also worked.

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So I still have the specimen 
here, it's quite warm.

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Actually it has to cool down first,

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before I can show you
that the healing works,

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but I will do a trial.

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Let's see --

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Yeah, it worked!

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Thank you.

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(Applause)