Highway Construction Technology
The German federal trunk road network comprises around 13,000 kilometres of federal motorways and almost 40,000 kilometres of federal roads, making it one of the densest trunk road networks in Europe. Awareness of the value of this transport infrastructure has grown significantly in recent years. Maintaining and developing the transport infrastructure in line with needs is the central task of state services of general interest.
The high proportion of truck traffic with its high axle loads is placing increasing demands on the federal trunk road network as the central component of Germany's overall transport infrastructure, while at the same time limiting investment resources. To address this, road construction must be geared not only to current requirements, but also to future challenges such as adapting road infrastructure to climate change, the necessary reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the scarcity of building materials. Solutions for more sustainable road construction include improving the durability of construction methods or increasing the use of recycled materials. In order to achieve the corresponding objectives, construction methods, construction and testing procedures for road fortifications as well as conservation measures must be further developed under technical and economic aspects. Furthermore, the researched products and innovations are to be evaluated with regard to their practical applicability in road construction and equipped with robust manufacturing processes.
Similarly, the road condition must be continuously observed and evaluated with regard to its functional characteristics of ‘traffic safety and driving comfort’ and its structural substance. This requires comprehensive maintenance management with suitable input data. Innovative, data-driven methods play an important role in ensuring availability and resilience for the benefit of road users and developers.
In all further developments of road construction for the benefit of road users, people affected by its effects and the environment, an optimal use of financial resources must always be sought.
Units
Sustainable Road Construction and Road Maintenance
Unit S1 develops innovative strategies to adapt road infrastructure to the challenges of climate change and to improve the sustainability of road construction. The evaluation of building materials and construction processes plays a major role in this context. As a further important task, maintenance management systems and federal procedures for maintenance, demand and financial planning are created and further developed, as well as network analyses of the road condition are carried out. Furthermore, fundamental questions of earthworks engineering are dealt with in order to ensure the durability and safety of earthworks and to ensure a sustainable use of materials.
Activ in the topics:
Concrete Pavements
Unit S2 deals with various structural aspects of concrete road construction. The focus is on quality assurance. For this purpose, investigations on cements and concretes are carried out and requirements for building materials, building material mixtures and coating properties are defined. In addition, the development of road surfaces for grippy and low-noise roads is researched and construction principles, installation techniques and maintenance technologies are questioned and further developed. In all considerations, ecological aspects and requirements to ensure sustainable development are taken into account. The aspects of recycling the materials while conserving resources as well as the durability and resilience of the concrete construction method are essential aspects to ensure the future viability of the concrete construction method.
Activ in the topics:
Asphalt Pavements
Unit S3 systematically develops the layers of asphalt superstructure further or new in order to achieve optimized and more durable use and substance properties and to meet the increasing demands on sustainability. These developments are both actively managed and monitored. Not only the asphalt mixture and the individual components are examined and the building principles and installation technology for asphalt fortifications are considered, but also the improvement of quality assurance in asphalt road construction is pursued and technologies of preservation are examined. There is also a focus on ensuring the sustainability of the asphalt construction method and the reusability of the asphalt.
Other important tasks are the performance of comparative tests in laboratories with RAP Stra recognition of all specialist areas and the supervision of calibration points for electromagnetic layer thickness measurement, which serve the quality assurance of testing.
Activ in the topics:
Chemistry, Environmental Protection
Unit S4 carries out cross-sectional tasks to clarify chemical issues in the areas of asphalt construction, concrete construction, environmental aspects and analyses for quality assurance of markings. The focus is on the following aspects:
Determination of analytical characteristics of substances and validation of appropriate analytical methods. Insights are fed directly into the corresponding regulations via the corresponding committees.
The investigation of chemical and physico-chemical values with regard to the resistance of building materials, derivation from the chemical composition for application properties as well as of bitumen (binding agents) with the determination of an application profile.
The environmental impact assessments of building materials, which are of increasing social and political importance.
Chemical tests on markings for quality assurance of existing products and approval of new products.
Activ in the topics:
Road Monitoring and Assessment
Unit S5 deals with the further development of the recording and evaluation methodology of road surfaces. In the context of condition recording and assessment (ZEB) but also in construction contracts, it makes a significant contribution to the quality assurance of the fast-moving measuring systems used in the recording of external service providers by issuing temporary operating approvals as well as carrying out external monitoring and control tests. For this purpose and for research purposes, the unit holds various reference measuring systems, reference sections on the duraBASt and test facilities specially developed for measuring system calibration (e.g. the transverse flatness test bench). In addition, the unit is entrusted with the maintenance and further development of the IT systems accompanying the ZEB process (e.g. ZEB standard programs and IT-ZEB servers) and exercises the professional perspective over the test centers for the test procedures Planograf and SRT pendulum.
Activ in the topics:
Analysis and Development of Pavenemtn Structures
Unit S6 looks at road pavement and its traffic and climatic loads in their entirety. The analysis is carried out across all types of buildings and relates to both the new building and the existing building.
In addition to analytical considerations with various methods of dimensioning, large-scale real trials are also in the foreground in order to develop and evaluate innovative, durable and thus sustainable construction methods and construction methods. The duraBASt site plays a central role in this.
Both the determination of the probation of construction methods in the network and the determination of residual service life are objectives of the substance assessment. The development, evaluation and quality assurance of innovative measurement methods and data-based methods as well as analytical methods are the focus of the unit.