Midwesterners like to joke there two seasons: Winter and road repair. But potholes aren't just frustrating to commuters. They're also a big and costly challenge that engineers face. Extreme heat or cold, water, stress and the good old passage of time all hold the potential to morph roads until they can’t take it anymore, causing them to bend or crack in response. “It's really complicated phenomena,” says Naser Sharifi, a civil engineer at the University of Pittsburgh. “Honestly, before I started working on pavement, I didn't know that this many details are involved.”
And while many streets are supposed to stay drivable for 20 to 30 years, climate change is accelerating wear and tear and pushing engineers to rethink how they design this crucial part of our transit network.
