Scientists replaced 40 percent of cement with rice husk cinder, limestone crushing waste, and silica sand, giving concrete a rubber-like quality, six to nine times more crack-resistant than regular concrete. It self-seals, replaces cement with plentiful waste products, and should be cheaper to use.

[u/mvea]

https://newatlas.com/materials/rubbery-crack-resistant-cement/

[u/geogle]

Could be very useful in poor earthquake prone environments that often underuse rebar. This may offer some of that needed tensile strength. However, it would need to be specially tested for it.

[u/Needmeawhip → u/geogle]

Could be usefull here in sweden where the roads look like they have been in an earthquake

[u/leno95 → u/Needmeawhip]

Concrete as a road surface shouldn't be used in areas where there are extreme differences in temperatures in the first place.

Given Sweden regularly has warm summers and cold winters, it could be argued in some parts there's a difference of 50°c between hot and cold periods, which will definitely ruin the concrete.

[u/OperationMobocracy → u/leno95]

I live in Minnesota, and the concrete roads definitely last much, much longer than the ones with asphalt. And our climate is very much like Sweden (hence all our Swedish immigrants). From what I can tell, the softness of asphalt causes it to flex, allowing moisture infiltration and frost heaving. Concrete seems to defy this.

The closest busy street to me was totally rebuilt about 8 years ago -- they literally dug it up, replaced underground utilities, re-did the road bed, and then used asphalt for the road surface except at bus stops where they poured pads for the buses (since heavy vehicles stopping ruins the asphalt). The bus pads are all in great shape, despite being at the edges of the roadway where salt-rich meltwater and ice accumulate. The main driving surface of asphalt is starting to show wear already. Some of this is due to traffic obviously, but in theory the concrete should show similar wear levels considering its worse placement on the road surface relative to moisture and the abuse from buses.

The problem for concrete is that right fixes for when it does gain potholes is to saw the section that's failing and re-pour concrete to fix it. These fixes seem to have a lot of durability, but it's expensive and time consuming.

What they seem to do instead is just clean out the areas where concrete failed, line them with tar and patch with asphalt, which often winds up being done annually because it never seals right and the asphalt patch blows out.

I've occasionally been tempted to experiment with my own patches in these places. Either just mixing and pouring bagged concrete, or experimenting with something like marine epoxy mixed with fine sand.