81509 - Sustainable Road Infrastructures

Learning outcomes

A successful student will know how roads are designed and built as well as learn about the construction materials and technologies either traditional and innovative. The approaches to evaluate the interaction and management of storm and ground waters through the infrastructure are taught.

Course contents

Context Sensitive Design for Roads. Road externalities.

Landscape impact of roads. Soil-bio engineering techniques. Mitigation and green retaining structures. Shielding. Design of a brushlayering slope.

Territorial Fragmentation. Fragmentation indexes. Faunal movements. Defragmentation techniques. Faunal passageways. Ducts and Ecoducts.

Sound and Noise. Decibels. Measuring noise. Noise pollution standards. Protection from noise. Low noise pavements. Porous asphalts. Dimensioning acoustic barriers. Non acoustic aspects of barriers. Design of acoustic barriers. Acoustic pavement materials.

Water in roads. Water in the Pavement Surfacing. Water Influence on Mechanical Behaviour of Pavements. Control of Pavement Water and Pollution Prevention. Pollution Mitigation. Best Management Practices and green solutions.

Air pollution from road traffic. Effects on humans. Mitigation techniques. Anti-smog pavements. Low energy bituminous materials.

Readings/Bibliography

The subject is wide and there is no specific book or reading to entirely cover the course.

A number of textbooks and papers will be mentioned during the lectures.

Teaching methods

Lectures will be given with slides and projected documents.

Assessment methods

Achievements will be assessed by the means of a final exam. This is based on an analytical assessment of the "expected learning outcomes" described above.

In order to properly assess such achievement the examination is composed of different sections: report/project and oral exam.

Students should hand in an individual report/project choosing one from the available examples. To be eligible to take the oral exam the student must hand in the completed report/project.

The oral session, consists of a technical conversation on two different topics among the course ones.

Higher grades will be awarded to students who demonstrate an organic understanding of the subject, a high ability for critical application, and a clear and concise presentation of the contents.

To obtain a passing grade, students are required to at least demonstrate a knowledge of the key concepts of the subject, some ability for critical application, and a comprehensible use of technical language.

Teaching tools

Students can download the lacture notes from the IOL webpage.

These are color .ppt slides with specific notes and comments.

Slides are updated each year.

Reports/Projects examples and initial data will be provided during the course.

Office hours

See the website of Cesare Sangiorgi