Representative AI image of workers paving a school-bus route with recycled tyre rubber and tyre tubes. Image Credits: ChatGPT.
In 2016, the road became the site of a less conventional experiment: part of its asphalt was made with rubber recovered from discarded tyres. Researchers examining the road in 2019 found no cracking or rutting in their visual observations. Using the PASER pavement rating method, the Michigan section scored 8.1. Davison Elementary School is located at 2800 E Davison St, Detroit. The 2016 Davison project did not prove that all rubber-modified roads are more durable, and three years was not long enough to assess a pavement’s full lifecycle.
Because the mixture had to withstand vehicle traffic rather than laboratory conditions, davison Road was a useful practical test. Because they are bulky, durable, and hard to dispose of traditionally, old tyres are difficult waste. The researchers reported good-to-excellent performance across the field sections in Michigan, Illinois and Georgia, with limited cracking, rutting, and other visible distress.
The test was small, but its setting made it useful, according to the Transportation Research Board . Every school day, buses travelled along a residential road in Davison, Michigan, carrying children to and from school. The road, Cambridge Drive between S. State and S. Dayton Street, carried the city’s school buses twice a day during the school year. The laboratory results were less straightforward. The authors used different laboratory methods to test cracking and rutting resistance in the rubber-modified mixes. Some laboratory cracking tests were less favourable after rubber was added. The field observations helped contextualise those laboratory results. A separate study of crumb-rubber mixtures published in the International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology also found that field sections built in Michigan showed no rutting after five years of service, while some cracking appeared in neighbouring control lanes using conventional bitumen. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons. Using them as road material helps keep rubber in circulation while reducing the need for some virgin materials. The Michigan study also showed why pilot studies matter: asphalt blends can perform differently in real traffic than in the lab. It was, however, a relatively small pavement test on a low-volume residential road. Still, the lack of cracking or rutting after three years was a positive result. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
