The Board of Directors of the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology, CDTI, has awarded funding to the project “Development of new electrically conductive pavements: Smartpave”. With a budget of €416,514.00 and a duration of 24 months, this initiative will be developed entirely by Sorigué and will have the collaboration of the Structures and Materials Technology Laboratory, LATEM which is part of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (DECA) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.  
 
In the field of Smart Materials and Smart Structures, Smartpave aims to develop energy-generating and self-sensing pavements. This approach is based on distributed generation, which is the creation of small energy sources distributed as close as possible to the point of consumption. And while the range of possibilities in this field promises to be very wide, roads will play an important role. 

 

In this context, the Smartpave project proposes, as a first step, the development of electrically conductive asphalt mixes using industrial by-products such as carbonaceous waste powder, recycled carbon fibre, steel aggregates and steel fibre, among others. With mechanical performance comparable to that of conventional pavements, these conductive asphalt compounds (CACs) should explore the possibility of offering piezoresistive properties for external stress sensing and triboelectric properties for power generation. 
 
Smartpave responds to the major challenge posed by the European Union to incorporate sustainable energy sources that no longer emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and to eliminate fossil fuels definitively by the year 2050. In this way, the EU is responding to the commitment made at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Paris (COP21), which agreed on the urgent need to decarbonise economies, an aim that involves seeking new forms of energy harvesting and replacing fossil fuels with global electrification.