In the UK, it is ofen wet and cold during the winter, creating a major transport challage, through slippery conditions, which, cause widespread disruptions, with dozens of rail service and flights cancelled and thousands of highways closed. Currently, salting spary on major tranposrt roads is one of effective and practical ways for winter service in the Department of Transport in UK, leadning to many issues  of negative environmental impact, enormous wasing resources such as salts, gritting vehicles and manpower, and dramatic traffic congeton. We will develop novel multifunctional transport road doating system with hydrophobic, freezing temperature sensing, and self-heating properties for smart transport road systems. The project exploits properly the excellent material properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in polyurethane (PU) resin for the development of the transport road coating with freezing temperature sensing and self-heating capabilities. 

The new innovate transport road coating system will be required to achieve two DfT priorities such as 1) improving journeys and safe and 2) safe, secure and sustainable transport. Chracterisation and laboratory testing of CNT/PU transport road coating materials wiell be conducted through experimental tests, which are outlined in the following tasks:

Work 1: Fabrication of CNT/PU coating materials; Work 2: Characterisation of hydrophobic of CNT/PU coating materials; Work 3: Chracterisation of freezing temperature sensing of CNT/PU coating materials; Work 4: Chracterisation of self-heating capabilities of CNT/PU coating materials