Civil Engineering October 2022 | Vol 30 No 9

46 October 2022 Civil Engineering A classic example of how the industry “friendly outcomes” described by Pinto 1 manifested in South Africa via “mechanisms and practices, traditionally tied to knowledge production, have been reshaped and rechannelled to favour industry friendly outcomes” is the recent case and hype created about Ultra-Thin Continuously Reinforced Concrete Pavements (UTCRCP) . 2 Until recently, UTCRCP was touted as an innovative road paving technology that can have significant advantages over traditional road paving techniques. 3 UTCRCP did challenge the conventional wisdom of concrete technology and concrete pavement application on flexile support. But although test sections were tested with various APT devices (the heavy vehicle simulator (HVS) and the mobile load simulator), the material de- sign and testing methods clearly lagged. Previous experience with APT and new product introduction in the roads environment showed that the mere fact APT was used does not mean the full gambit of the life cycle of the innovative product had been validated. In this case constructability issues 4 were clearly problematic, as evidenced by the major impact of something as simple as ambient temperature at the time of construction. Forensic investigations of failures pointed the finger at the high steel and steel fibre content being unduly influenced by the ambient temperature, and cracking and buckling could be traced back to retained heat in the steel. It soon also became apparent that the whole life cycle of the research and development (R&D) also glided over important issues like repair and maintenance requirements, ap- proaches and technologies. Personal perception and experi- ence with the implementation of this technology was that it was literally pre- maturely forced upon the broader roads industry. In effect, it jumped over neces- sary phases of development and evalu- ation, which take time, directly to full engineering applications on major freeway projects. This technology development led to a number of well-published research papers and even supported masters and PhD studies. This all classifies as friendly research for several reasons. The proof of the pudding is, as always, in the eating. Very limited, if any, of the current major concrete projects on freeways now specify this technology. It is definitely not specified on lower traffic volume flexible rural road upgrades as originally claimed it would be. Research funding in support of this technology had clear, targeted friendly research outcomes which probably kept more discerning or even critical peer reviewers at bay. The persons involved may have depended on this research in a desert of research support. It is understood that it would have been self-defeating to bite or even snarl at the hand that feeds them. Hindsight is a perfect science, and it is now clear that there was a blind spot with obvious drawbacks and limited opportu- nity for proper open peer review. In contrast to this, when bitumen rubber was first introduced to South Africa as a new innovative technology 5 during the early 1980s via cooperation between industry, road authorities and the CSIR, various problems were encoun- tered during the implementation phase. In one case, the now obvious digestion period issue with the rubber crumbs even created a spectacular failure under an HVS test. Because it was handled in the open with proper peer reviewed publications and cooperation, contribu- tions came forth from all role players to solve such potentially devastating development problems. This technology is now well established and has been transferred to risk-averse implementer countries like Australia. The R&D life cycle went through the full implementation phase of collective learning and overcame problems associated with it. A typical illustration is the concept of new crumb rubber 6 which developed subsequently and manages the pre-digestion process successfully, making it much more constructable even in situations with long-distance logistic demands. Just to emphasise the point made, Australia – or any other country for that matter – had not taken up the UTCRCP technology, yet the BR technology was apparently suc- cessfully transferred. Op i n i on The parallels between road and transportation R&D and mushroom farming in South Africa – Part 2 Dr Emile Horak Pr Eng Managing Director Kubu Consultancy emileh@global.co.za Part 1 of this two-part series was published in the September 2022 issue of Civil Engineering (Vol.30 No.8). This article is the second of a two-part essay on the framework for the discussion of ignorance and agnotology in the roads and transportation field in South Africa. It focuses on the demonstration of creation of agnotology or “darkness” conducive to mushroom farming.