Asphalt roads are the backbone of our infrastructure. The better we know and understand asphalt as a construction material, the safer, more sustainable, more exact and more economical we can build and rehabilitate roads and other trafficked areas.

Asphalt petrology, a young field of research under the roof of road construction, uses, besides the classical asphalt analytical methods, also know-how from the field of petrology, the science of rocks, to further investigate the composition of asphalt and the processes of change over the life cycle of asphalt.

By means of special methods, tailored to the particular needs of asphalt, such as preparation techniques, analytical methods and modern IT-based image analysis, the asphalt petrology looks in greater detail into the material structure than current conventional methods.

With the new analysis methods we will gain a better and more accurate understanding of the structure and the processes within the asphalt layers throughout the complete cycle of life.

The aim of asphalt petrology is to gain results that lead to more durable and more sustainable roads.