The sun can often wreak havoc on asphalt roads and parking lots in more than one way. Powerful UV rays weaken the pavement causing cracking, surface unevenness, and water seepage. And once the weather switches to cold, the large temperature difference causes the pavement to crack even further, which is why you sometimes see potholes forming at the end of both the warm and cold seasons.
Regular maintenance and replacement of asphalt roads is just a fact of modern life, but that doesn’t mean we have to be content with the status quo. Researchers at RMIT University in Australia performed a series of experiments in which they used rubber from used tires in the composition of freshly lied asphalt, finding that this rubber-bitumen mix halves the rate of sun damage, which could help roads last a lot longer.
Besides improving road and pavement durability, this approach also tackles our used tire problem. In the United States alone, over 300 million scrap tires are produced, most of which end up in landfills since they are almost impossible to recycle using conventional methods.
The rubber crumbs from old tires act like a sunscreen for the asphalt.
