Advanced Ceramic Material Finds Use in Potholes

What looks like a large paw print in the road is actually a Ceramicrete patch (top) with surface cracks. The patch held up for more than two years on an Argonne road under 50-100 truck trips daily, while another pothole developed next to it.

When Wagh (foreground, at left) and current Ceramicrete Account Manager Terry Maynard (OTT) examined the patches, they found that there were a few surface cracks, but the Ceramicrete material was intact and supporting vehicle traffic.

Argonne's Pat O'Malley measures the circular "paw print" Ceramicrete patch, which is about 1 foot in diameter.

As anyone who drove over it can attest, the roadway on Argonne's Southwood Drive near Building 331 was rough going two years ago. The road contained numerous potholes of various shapes and sizes. Paul Eichamer (then the Ceramicrete Account Manager in Argonne's Office of Technology Transfer) believed he had a solution: Ceramicrete, a ceramic material that mixes up and can be applied much like concrete.

Eichamer enlisted Ceramicrete developer Arun Wagh and his colleague Seung-Young Jeong, who prepared a batch of Ceramicrete and applied it to several of the potholes.

"The material is easy to work with," said Wagh, "and finishes very much like concrete, using the same tools."

That was in February 1999. The result road patches that have remained in place without shrinking or structural cracking — no mean feat in the Midwest, where winter temperatures and weather conditions wreak havoc with road materials, including those used to patch potholes.

According to Pat O'Malley, Utilities Foreman for Plant Facilities and Services, the patch has supported about 50-100 truck trips over it daily for the past two-plus years. "We aim for it," said O'Malley, referring to the Ceramicrete patch. "We want to drive over it as much as possible to see how well it will hold up." "Ceramicrete is great for this purpose," said developer Wagh, "because it's lighter and more durable than cement and binds well to all types of road material. It also is more impervious to water, which means it holds up well under freeze-thaw conditions."

In fact, when the patches were laid in 1999, temperatures were hovering at the freezing point. The patches went in about 10:00 in the morning and by mid-afternoon, rain was falling and continued for two days. When Wagh checked the patch days later, the only visible evidence of the rain was some tiny indentations where raindrops had fallen on the Ceramicrete before it cured completely. The patches were doing just fine.

But durability isn't the only advantage to using Ceramicrete on potholes.

"Ceramicrete is much faster to use than concrete, for two reasons," says Wagh. "First, it cures in under two hours, even at temperatures below freezing because it has an 'exothermic' reaction, which means it generates heat.

Wagh credits OTT with much of Ceramicrete's success in the commercial arena. "The OTT Account Managers — first Jim Gleeson, Don Knight, and Paul Eichamer and now Terry Maynard — have played a strong role in our success with Ceramicrete. This truly has been a team effort."

For More Information

Companies interested in licensing Ceramicrete should contact Terry Maynard, Office of Technology Transfer, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Ave., Argonne , IL 60439 (630-252-9771, maynard@anl.gov).