Srinagar: Kashmir’s engineering students have come up with a solution for road cracks.
A survey ‘Use of discrete fibers in concrete road pavements’ carried by five students of SSM College of Engineering, Parihaspora reveals that there are several solutions available to overcome problems regarding roads developing cracks in Kashmir and one among them was the addition of fibers to construct fiber-reinforced concrete pavements.
The survey by engineering students Syed Uzair Mustaqeem, Bareen Shafi, Fibah Jan, Zuha Ashraf, and Qazi Zarnub under the supervision of Insha Shahzad and Shafaqat Bhat of the Department of Civil Engineering, SSM College of Engineering, Parihaspora noticed that J&K ERA, under the World Bank-funded JTFRP, had introduced the construction of ‘rigid concrete pavement’ in Kashmir.
“It is a huge leap in the right direction of sustainable development and a way to break free from the shackles of obsolete methods used in the construction of roads,” the survey report said.
It said that keeping in mind the local requirements in an era of technological revolution, every other obsolete technology was being replaced with a newer and better one but the roads in Kashmir continued to remain vulnerable.
The report stated that every individual in Kashmir was familiar with the condition of the roads and the resulting back-hurting journey with the potholes and bumps taking their toll.
“Not only do these roads affect our health badly but also affect our transportation carriers like cars and buses. The bumpy journey proves to be detrimental to the health of the cars and adds to the expenses of the commoners,” it said.
The survey report said that now and then the recently-laid macadamised roads are found to need repairs.
“The concrete roads are not prone to potholes and have an amazing lifespan of about 20 years,” the report said. “The only other major issue that concrete roads have is the formation of cracks that drastically reduce the shelf life of these roads. The stretch of concrete roads constructed in Kashmir so far has already been hit by this.”
It said that concrete roads were susceptible to cracking and crack formation and the authorities could have taken certain measures beforehand.
The survey findings were that use of polyester fibers and polypropylene fibers in different dosages to obtain a trend and detect the optimum dosage required increasing the strength of concrete to its maximum.
“The test results depicted an increase in strength of concrete but the best thing that we analysed was the trend of limited crack formation. The crack formation was reduced drastically. Even when the cracks were formed, fibers acted as a stitching material that helped keep the concrete bound and to limit the crack widening,” said Syed Uzair Mustaqeem, one of the students.