Buckling Highways: German Autobahns Can't Stand the Heat

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/driver-killed-as-extreme-heat-causes-german-highways-to-buckle-a-906914.html



A motorcyclist was killed Wednesday after driving over this rip in the highway near Abensberg.

Buckling Highways: German Autobahns Can't Stand the Heat
June 20, 2013 – 03:19 PM

The extreme heat blanketing much of Germany over the past two days has triggered buckling in the country's famed autobahns, and in one location in Bavaria a rip in highway pavement resulted in the death of one motorcyclist and injuries to several other motorists on Wednesday.

A 59-year-old motorcyclist crashed into a guardrail Wednesday after driving over a bulge in the concrete on the highway A93, near Abensberg in the state of Bavaria, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Munich. He died on the scene from his injuries.

Four people were injured in vehicles that had driven over the ripped pavement before the motorcycle crash. Josef Seebacher, a spokesman for the local highway authority, told the newspaper Mittelbayerischen Zeitung that the rip in the highway happened within minutes. "Just 10 minutes before the accident, a monitoring vehicle had passed by," he told the paper. Temperatures in the area reached as high as 34 degrees Celsius (93 degrees Fahrenheit) Wednesday, as many areas of the country experienced their hottest day of the year.

The so-called "blow-ups" on the highway, when extreme heat causes the pavement to buckle and rip, occur in the older portions built with concrete, authorities say. Seebacher warned drivers to proceed with caution when driving on concrete sections of the highway. Repair work on the affected portion of highway A93 continued Thursday morning, according to local reports.

[Javaman]

1. Nature provides it's own speed bumps.

with help from us of course.

[WestStar]

2. The same thing has been happening in Minnesota for decades

But it's unheard of here in Arizona.

I wonder why that is?

[Yo_Mama]

4. Arizona's dry

It's not the heat, but the combination of cooler infrastructure, moisture saturation and then heat:
http://www.missourinet.com/2011/06/08/rain-and-extreme-heat-can-cause-road-blowups-says-state-tramsportation-department/

The problem only occurs when the water can get down in the concrete, so the asphalt roads (unless cracked) don't do this generally, although if the shoulders aren't paved and the road isn't properly surfaced, the infrastructure can get wet and then the same type of failure can occur.

Here's a document from the 1970s discussing concrete road blowups. As you point out, this has been happening pretty much forever.
http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2191&context=jtrp

[hunter]

3. I saw that happen in Illinois.

One slab fell under the other making a large step facing the direction of traffic. It made a mess of people's cars but nobody was killed. There were car parts scattered all over the highway. Some cars were missing wheels.