A method for bottom-up cracks healing via selective and deep microwave heating

The expected life of an asphalt road pavement depends on many factors (fatigue cracking, thermal cracking, etc). Bottom-up cracking is a common mode of hot mix asphalt pavement distress and appears to be critical. In view of this, the objectives of the study presented in this paper were confined into setting up an innovative and non-destructive method to carry out the rehabilitation of the pavement structure. In particular, a new procedure for healing in-depth damaged asphalt pavements is proposed and discussed. This method, based on selective heating, uses appropriate doping and electromagnetic fields in the microwave frequency range in order to induce the self-healing process of the material. Compared to the existing procedures, it allows a deep, selective, adaptive, and not invasive healing. The procedure, numerically validated by multi-physical simulations, can be applied to all solid structures made up of materials wherein the self-healing process can be induced by heating.