Skip to main content

Newly constructed low-noise asphalt surface fails

Questions are being asked over the construction of a new section of the A1 autobahn in Germany. The highway stretch is being scrutinised due to surface failures and lies close to the city of Bremen but has been open for less than three months.
May 15, 2012 Read time: 1 min
Questions are being asked over the construction of a new section of the A1 autobahn in Germany.

The highway stretch is being scrutinised due to surface failures and lies close to the city of Bremen but has been open for less than three months.

The road carries around 70,000 vehicles/day and its construction was intended to reduce congestion between the port cities of Hamburg and Bremen. Numerous potholes are reported to have appeared in the surface of the highway. Given the recent severe weather, failures of older road surfaces are expected but these problems should not occur on links that have been so recently completed.

The investigations will focus on how water penetration into joints could have already caused the freeze-thaw process to break up the running surface or whether other problems such as material segregation or incorrect mix design could have been factors. The low-noise asphalt surface is crumbling at various points along the 73km section recently opened.

Related Content

  • Traffic control to beat congestion
    November 6, 2012
    Max Lay discusses how congestion has posed problems throughout history from early civilisation to the present day One of the earliest known human settlements was at the Springs of Elisha at Jericho. Inevitably, locals collecting fresh water from the springs would encounter other water carriers. When a path was too narrow, or access to it was too limited, or it crossed another path, some carriers would find it necessary to stand aside for others. Priority in such cases might be based on common courtesy and p
  • Cold recycling in Monsanto, Portugal
    November 24, 2021
    A key machine used for the cold recycling train was the new Wirtgen W 380 CR, which made its debut for Pragosa on this construction site.
  • $1 billion Bengaluru road tunnel
    June 25, 2025
    A $1 billion Bengaluru road tunnel project is planned.
  • Topcon machine control units take the heat off an Alaskan contractor
    December 4, 2015
    Juniper, spruce, cranberry, cottonwood and rose. Most people think of pine trees and berries amid beautiful country fields. But for one contractor based just below the Arctic Circle in the US state of Alaska, the names represent a successful job completed using machine control. Valley General Construction recently finished a US$350,000 contract for the upgrading of country roads in the local borough of Matanuska-Susitna. The colourful names belong to roads in a heavily wooded residential subdivision located