Gene-editable materials for future transportation infrastructure: a review for polyurethane-based pavement

With the rapid development of society and industry, novel technologies and materials related to pavement engineering are constantly emerging. However, with the continuous improvement of people’s demands, pavement engineering also faces more and more enormous challenges that the pavement materials must have excellent engineering properties and environmental benefits. Meanwhile, the intelligence is the mainstream development direction of modern society, and the development trend of future transportation infrastructure. Materials Genome Initiative, a program for the development of new materials that materials design is conducted by up-front simulations and predictions, followed by key validation experiments, the rapid development of science and technology and AI toolset (big data and machine learning) provide new opportunities and strong technical supports for pavement materials development that shorten the development-application cycle of new material, reduce cost and promote the application of new carriers such as intelligent sensing components in transportation engineering, to achieve the intelligence of transportation engineering. However, traditional pavement materials possess several unavoidable shortcomings, indicating that it is exceedingly difficult for them to meet the above requirements for future pavement materials. Therefore, the development of future new pavement materials, which can be designed on-demand as well as possessing enough mechanical properties, high durability, practical functionality, and high environmental protection, is urgent. In recent years, as a “designable” polymer material with various excellent engineering performances, polyurethane (PU) has been widely applied in pavement practices by changing the chemical structures of raw materials and their mix proportions, for instance pavement repairing material, permeable pavement material, tunnel paving material and bridge deck paving materials, etc. Although PU material has been widely applied in practices, a systematically summarization is still quite necessary for further understanding the working mechanism of PU materials and optimization it’s engineering applications. To fill the gap, this article puts forward the special requirements for future transportation infrastructure materials, and introduces the basic properties and working mechanism of PU materials in order to make up for the defects of conventional road materials. Based on this, this article also summarizes the engineering performances and environmental benefits of applying PU as the binder for different road infrastructure materials in recent years. Considering the gene-editable nature of polyurethane, further research of the on-demand design principles of PU pavement materials is recommended. The establishment of raw material gene database, material terminal performance database and their structure-activity relationship are highlighted. The current research is essential to the practice guidance and further optimization of the PU materials for road infrastructures, which in line with the future Carbon neutral policy. © The Author(s) 2021.