China Looks at Asphalt-Rubber Technology

Dr. Jorge Sousa, vice president of RPA, at the invitation of Prof. Zhongyin Guo, Head of Transportation Engineering School, and of Prof. Zukang Yao, conducted a three-day seminar at the TongJi University in Shanghai, China. Tongji University is one of the most prestigious Universities in China in the pavement and transportation field. The University currently enrolls about 40,000 students and annually awards about 2,000 Ph.d and Masters degrees. One of the key aspects of his visit was the presentation of Asphalt-Rubber technology and the reflective cracking mechanistic overlay design method developed by CONSULPAV International under RPA funding and Arizona Department of Transportation support. Dr. Jorge Sousa also visited with Jiao Zhenfang, Secretary General of the China Highway and Transportation Society in Beijing, in a meeting arranged by Ding James and General Cheng Qi from LandPac. One of the highlights of the meeting was the offer extended by the Secretary General to host the AR2006 - Asphalt Rubber Conference in China. China Highway and Transportation Society was founded in 1978 and it was formerly known as China National Road Construction Association, whichstarted in 1921 in Shanghai. The Society has thus far 760 corporation members and 49,000 individual members across China.

At the invitation of Prof. Qian Guo Chao - Deputy Director of the Communications Department of Jiangsu Province, Dr. Sousa visited the new expressway constructed near Nanjing followed by a presentation on Asphalt-Rubber at the Jiansu Transportation Research Institute. Dr. Sousa was extremely impressed with the excellent quality of the roads that had just been opened to the traffic one day prior to his visit ("the IRI was extremely low and the quality of the landscape superb") and also by the quality and completeness of the laboratory facilities existing at the Research Institute. At the Research Institute Dr. Sousa was hosted by the Director Fu Guanhua. In the last 5 years 20,359 km of freeways were built in China. In 2002 alone 59,500 km of rural roads were constructed. This rate of construction is expected to be maintained for many more years. Currently China must maintain a otal of 1,765,000 km of roads annually. Given the sometimes extreme weather and traffic conditions existing in China, Dr. Sousa considers that Asphalt-Rubber will be an extremely cost effective solution for many of the highway problems China is faced with. Dr. Sousa best describes the current growth rate in China's traffic,"When I visited China in 1999 the freeway between Nanjing and Shanghai had just been opened and there was almost no traffic. Today, four years later, that freeway is totally congested and a widening of the highway to 4 lanes each way is under construction." Following Dr. Sousa's visit to China, RPA was visited by Louis Lui and Lawrence Lee, Kowloon, Hong Kong, who were hosted on an Industry tour by Executive Director Doug Carlson. During the course of their stay, the Chinese visitors met with MACTEC Engineering, visited the Arizona State University Civil Engineering Research Laboratory and drove the newly constructed "Quiet Pavements" on the Phoenix Metro Freeway system. The visitors are interested in the potential of Asphalt-Rubber in their country.

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