Recent trends in surface paving solutions

Bio

He is a Civil Engineer in Transportation since year 2000, today he is Associate Professor at the Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering of the University of Bologna, in Bologna. He works in the Transportation Infrastructures section of the Department and addresses research themes related to the pavement materials and innovative construction technologies. The use of recycled materials and low impact solutions are of primary importance in Dr. Sangiorgi’s research and the collaboration with renowned research institutes are the basis for the research activities and the involvement of students at any level (PhD and MSc), as well as for the participation in various international research groups and associations, such as RILEM, APSE and iSMARTi.
In the area of pavement materials the link with the Nottingham Transportation Engineering Centre is active since year 2001 after he spent part of his PhD at the former NCPE working on interlayer bonding. Then new links were established with other important research centers such as the TU Delft in The Netherlands, the Pavement Research Center (PRC) in Berkeley (today in Davis) (University of California, USA), the Centre for Pavement and Transportation Technology (CPATT) in Waterloo (University of Waterloo, Canada), the Centre of Subjects Allied to Built Environment Research (SABER) at Ulster University (UK), the C-MADE, Centre for Materials and Building Technology, in Beira Interior (Portugal), the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering of the London Brunel University, the Institute of Transportation of TU Wien and, more recently, the Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE), in Stockholm, Sweden.
Dr. Sangiorgi is a Marie Curie Fellow since 2015 as partner of the MSCA-RISE project REMINE on the “Reuse of mining waste into innovative geopolymeric-based structural panels, precast, ready mixes and insitu applications”. Moreover, Dr. Sangiorgi is Coordinator of two Marie Curie Projects: the H2020 MSCA-ITN-ETN project SAFERUP! on Sustainable, Accessible, Safe, Resilient and Smart Urban Pavements that had its official Kick-off in March 2018 and ended in May 2022 and the HE MSCA-DN project GreeNexUS on Green-health- safety Nexus for new Urban Spaces that will Kick-off in January 2023.
Dr. Sangiorgi is and has been Chief Investigator of a number of research project in the private and public sectors dealing mainly with paving recycling materials and innovative construction solutions. He has lead researches for an overall amount of grants reaching over 5 million Euros in the last 10 years. Among the funding companies/institutions can be found: ENI SpA, Ecopneus, Scpa, Marini Spa, Ammann Italy srl, SINA- Astm and Iterchimica srl.
Dr. Sangiorgi is author or co-author of 100+ indexed scientific international publications and has been invited to present the activities and researches of his research group at more than 50 national and international events such as Symposiums, Conferences, Workshops, Seminars and Summer Schools. He acted as Chairman and Keynote lecturer at international events in and out of Europe.
He is reviewer for more than 50 scientific journals and acted as reviewer for many national and international Conferences and Congresses, among them the Transport Research Arena.

Abstract

Road pavements are changing to cope with the novel needs of required functional characteristics and reduced impacts in terms of construction and service life externalities. In particular, new paving solutions are targeting, like other construction approaches, the fulfilment of one or more Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), among them the Sustainable cities and communities one. The main trends of the post-COVID era are still made fluid by the uncertainties of the on-going geo-political crisis, but the focus on sustainability and recycling are still of main concern across Europe and beyond. In the light of the above, the proposed talk will identify some recent tested technologies and techniques that include the use of larger and larger quantities of Reclaimed Asphalt Pavements in new constructions and maintenance works and the construction of functional pavements contributing to the reduction of noise emissions and the mitigation of the impermeabilization of public surfaces that is typical of traditional road pavements. Examples of experimental applications and laboratory/in situ assessment of their effectiveness will be presented and discussed, showing the feasibility of solutions that have high Technological Readiness Level.