Civil Engineering Association

Full Version: New French pavement generates electricity
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TOULOUSE (France), April 10: Pedestrians are using specially designed pavements to generate electricity in a two-week energy-saving trial in the French city of Toulouse.

The group of paving slabs installed in the city centre can generate 30 watts of electricity, enough to power overhead street lights. The pavement was invented by Dutch firm Jaap Van der Braak.

"It is an experiment for now, but this system, unique in the world, allows us to anticipate a whole series of applications for the city," the deputy mayor in charge of sustainable development, Alexandre Marciel, told Reuters.

The paving slabs contain micro-sensors that capture the energy created by people walking on them, and store it in a battery. This could enable the city to collect electricity during the day for use at night when there are fewer people on the streets.


Pavement which produces electricity – by walking on it (every step by step)

In France scientists develop pavement which produce electricity while people walk on it. Pressure pads under pavements could generate electricity from walking over it.

In pavement there are micro sensors which collect electricity while people walk over it and save it into batteries. This pavement can produce electricity during the day (when there is more people) and released it in to public light over the night.

Pavement is sensitive on touch and transforms energy of the motion into electricity. Pavement can provide up to 30 Watts of electricity which is enough for public light.

Generally pavement is the durable surface material laid down on an area intended to sustain vehicular or foot traffic. In the past cobblestones and granite setts were extensively used, but these surfaces have mostly been replaced by asphalt or concrete. Such surfaces are frequently marked to guide traffic. Today, permeable paving methods are beginning to be used for low-impact roadways and walkways.

The term road metal refers to the broken stone or cinders used in the repair or construction of roads or railways and is derived from the Latin metallum, which means both mine and quarry. Metalling is known to have been used extensively in the construction of roads by soldiers of the Roman Empire but a limestone-surfaced road, thought to date back to the Bronze age, has been found in Britain.
Metalling has had two distinct usages in road surfacing. The term originally referred to the process of creating a gravel roadway. The route of the roadway would first be dug down several feet and, depending on local conditions, French drains may or may not have been added.
Next, large stones were placed and compacted, followed by successive layers of smaller stones, until the road surface was composed of small stones compacted into a hard, durable surface. Road metal later became the name of stone chippings mixed with tar to form the road surfacing material tarmac.