Road Infrastructure Maintenance: A Future Oriented FO-Based Monitoring System

Road infrastructures maintenance is one of the trend topics of the last years. Road transport is the principal mode of inland passenger travel in Europe and often their management and maintenance systems are dated. InfraROB is a European Union’s Horizon 2020 fonded project (09/2021–02/2025) which aims (among the others) to increase the availability of the transport network, to reduce the cost of the repetitive tasks and to upgrade the maintenance system of the road infrastructures. InfraROB entails advancement across different, but strictly interrelated, technological areas. Nuova Tesi System is involved in the development of an all-in-one multi-functional precast concrete element applicable as roadside safety/restraint system and as road construction element at the same time, but also in tests on new solutions for road maintenance exploiting Fiber Optic Sensors (FOS) technology for asphalt-paved roads. The sensors, embedded in the asphalt, can monitor parameters as strain and temperature along the stretch of interest (up to 2 km) with a resolution of 1 cm, using the Rayleigh scattering. Extensive test campaign (in both laboratory and real scale) inspected FOS parameter and performance, highlighting a 100% success rate in surviving to asphalt realization process and the capability of detecting residual stress during the pavement realization. The obtained results confirm the technology’s potential to revolutionize road maintenance.