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A Program Funded by the Collaborating for Success through People Initiative of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, United Kingdom Menu:
[top] Current Research ActivitiesThis program is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in the United Kingdom . It is a people-based activity which will add value and increase research outputs in the area of paving materials by providing a dynamic environment for the exchange of ideas and research philosophies. The program is targeted at studying the fundamental properties of pavement materials based on the principles of material science, micro-structural characterisation, and mechanics. The focus of the proposed programme is on including expertise from disciplines outside the general area of pavement engineering as well as strengthening international collaboration. [top] To facilitate interactions amongst the collaborators, research themes have been chosen that will provide both scope for interdisciplinary research and sufficient critical mass to give the opportunity to develop collaborations. For each theme, the researchers that will be involved are identified. Moisture Damage & Surface Free Energy Testing The use of surface free energy has shown great potential to identify suitable bitumen-aggregate combinations to resist the influence of moisture damage in asphalt mixtures. Activities associated with this research theme will involve researchers from NTEC and Imperial College spending three months working with academic researchers and research staff at Texas A&M University . The researchers will assess the tests and techniques currently being used within the Materials Engineering Group at Texas A&M to understand the mechanisms influencing the adhesive bond, cohesive strength and durability of asphalt mixtures. NTEC has recently invested £150k in establishing a physicochemical laboratory comprising dynamic contact angle and dynamic vapour sorption systems, together with a micro-calorimeter, to determine the surface energy parameters of aggregates, mineral fillers and bituminous binders. Researchers from Texas A&M and Imperial College will spend three months working with researchers in the new laboratory in NTEC. This exchange will increase the benefit of this strategic investment and stimulate the rapid commissioning of the equipment. The researchers from Texas A&M University will also be able to use the unique combined ageing and moisture conditioning system (SATS test) developed at Nottingham to directly assess the moisture susceptibility of asphalt mixtures. Adhesion Testing and Modelling This activity will allow researchers from Imperial College to apply their adhesion testing and modelling expertise to the application area of asphalt materials. The direct measurement and modelling of bitumen-aggregate adhesion will compliment the techniques described above and provide a testing framework, or model, that can be used to optimise asphalt mixture design to maximise moisture damage resistance. Researchers involved with moisture damage assessment at NTEC Texas A&M will spend three months working with the adhesives group at Imperial in order to understand the procedures associated with adhesion testing and modelling and to select which of these is applicable to determine the dry and wet adhesive bond between aggregate and bitumen. X-ray CT ImagingThis exchange activity will allow researchers from NTEC and Texas A&M University to identify and develop imaging techniques that can be used to capture and analyse 3D images of asphalt mixture specimens using X-ray CT equipment based in Nottingham and Texas . In addition, researchers will work on developing analytical techniques and computational procedures to characterise the micro-structural (internal aggregate matrix) of the specimens. The micro-structure distribution will be related to the mixture performance under different environmental and loading conditions. As both Universities have recently purchased identical X-ray CT machines from the same supplier, this exchange of researchers will speed up the commissioning process for these two machines. Researchers from Nottingham will initially spend three months working at Texas A&M University developing procedures to generate 3D images on the micro-structure of asphalt mixtures. Following this a number of researchers from Texas A&M University will spend three months in Nottingham. [top] People-Based Activities Methodology and Programme A range of methodologies and activities are proposed to ensure the implementation and success of the project and add value to the collaborations. In particular, activities are planned that will maintain enthusiasm with a focus on research themes that will enable the exchange ofacademic researchers, PDRAs and PhD researchers between the two UK research organisations and international collaborators at Texas A&M University. These activities will include two-way international exchanges as well as movement between the different disciplines associated with each of the research groups in three-month blocks. The overall aim will be to allow researchers to apply their expertise to a new field or application area as well as host researchers with expertise distinct from their own. Part of the activities will involve the creation of new links (collaborations) between the organisations and potentially the application of cross-disciplinary techniques to new areas. In addition, the activities will complement and build on the existing expertise and knowledge of the applicants. The proposed activities include the following: • Initial Exchange Visits: Initial visits between the three organisations will be undertaken by the key academics to familiarise themselves with the research expertise and testing facilities of the collaborators. Detailed discussions of the planned workshops will be a key output of the visits as well as the timetable for people exchanges. • Workshops and ‘Sandpits ': These will be a key element of exchanging information and developing new research approaches through presentations and informal discussion. Workshops will be arranged around each of the research themes and will typically cover 2 or 3 days. The later part of the workshops will include a “Sandpit” approach where, having identified the research challenges and questions, the group brainstorms innovative approaches to the issues and potential funding sources. The ideas from these activities will feed into the people-based exchanges and be agreed upon and taken forward through separate discussions and with the support of email, the video conferencing facilities and the Virtual Collaboration Environment. Three workshops (one per research theme) will be arranged and held at each of the three organisations. • Research Seminars: Research seminars will be planned at three-monthly intervals during the 18 months of the project to facilitate discussions. Each organisation will be responsible for organising two seminars and the researchers involved in the exchange activities will be required to present their current research activities, findings, research ideas and future plans. • People-Based Exchanges: This activity is focussed on providing funding (primarily travel and subsistence) for researchers to undertake two-way exchanges between the three research organisations under the research themes of moisture damage, adhesion and micro-structural characterisation of asphalt mixtures. Typical visits will be for 3 months and will provide researchers with the opportunity to work face-to-face with colleagues at different universities and in different disciplines. This activity forms the core of the proposal. • Web Site: A project web site will de developed to publicise the work and will reflect the expertise of the three organisations and the activities associated with the exchanges. • International Symposium: An international symposium will be arranged at the end of the project in the UK where researchers from the three organisations will be given the opportunity to present aspects of the work undertaken as part of this project. Whilst the core of the delegates will come from the pavement engineering community, the conference will be marketed to a wider cross-disciplinary audience. • Video Conferencing (VC): With good facilities available at the different institutions, VC will be used wherever possible after the initial exchange visits. Regular VC meetings will be arranged which will underpin the continual face-to-face dialogue between researchers that will be possible through the people-based exchanges and will facilitate the exchange of ideas and the continuous development of research proposals. • Speed Networking and Email Conferencing : Experimentation will be carried out with two other areas of communication, speed networking and email conferencing. This approach is loosely based on the “speed dating” concept; this “speed networking” concept is already in use elsewhere as a business networking tool. This concept might be used at the workshops as a means of introducing the researchers to larger groups of people. Email conferencing will be used to develop an online discussion between exchange researchers, their academic hosts and their home academics, typically around 5 or 10 people, over say a two hour period and focussed on a particular issue. This can be achieved by establishing a regular time slot (say fortnightly) for email discussion on various topics. • Virtual Collaboration Environment: An important approach to addressing the physical separation of the collaborators and to enhance communication will be to establish an electronic communications infrastructure – a Virtual Collaboration Environment - to support rich collaboration between distributed researchers. We plan to use the BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work) document sharing tool to enable researchers to share documents, data, video, software and other materials, and to annotate and discuss these. BSCW has proved highly effective in previous projects due to its robustness when handling large documents and is an easy to use web based interface. • Project Meetings : Three-monthly project meetings, involving academic supervisors and researchers, will be planned and combined with research seminars when possible. Reports from each of the collaborators will be tabled and the meetings will be used to access the programme of activities. • PhD Examiners & PhD Committee Members : The USA academics will be invited to serve as external examiners on UK PhDs, while the UK academics will be invited to become members of USA PhD committees. This will help ensure full integration of the research activities. [top] The overall aim of this proposal is to build strong research links between the three organisations in the UK and USA that will develop and sustain effective future collaborations and generate future research activity. The management and overall co-ordination of the activities associated with the proposal will be undertaken by Dr Airey and Prof. Collop. They will be responsible for programming the exchanges between the three research organisations and facilitating the other people-based activities. The activities planned at Texas A&M University will be managed by Prof. Little and Dr Masad, while the activities to be held at Imperial College will be managed by Prof. Kinloch. [top] Deliverables, Dissemination Strategy and Overall BenefitsDissemination will be by active networking as outlined in the programme of activities. It is essential that the three organisations be pro-active in stimulating interest and helping to drive practically relevant research developments. By demonstrating the added value of the people-based activities and exchanges, we expect that the participating institutions and wider community (i.e. other research institutions and industry partners) would support the continuation of this concept after the EPSRC funding has finished. Required funding can be secured through a combination of research proposals (submitted to funding bodies in the UK and USA ) and industrial contributions. [top]
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