As part of the series “In Motion”, which appeared in the current issue of the RUB science magazine 'Rubin', Dr.-Ing. Cornelia Kalender and Dr.-Ing. Nina Nytus provide insights into wind engineering and sustainable approaches in road construction.

Wind engineering

“In wind engineering, we investigate the interaction of wind with our environment, i.e. close to the ground in the lower hundred meters of our atmosphere,” explains Dr.-Ing. Cornelia Kalender, a member of the Wind Engineering and Fluid Mechanics working group, in the article “Moving Research” in the current issue of 'Rubin'. On the one hand, the interaction is influenced by the movement and dispersion of substances in the air, and on the other hand by the effect of wind on structures. Ultimately, wind causes buildings or components to move, e.g. bridges, high-rise buildings, chimneys and wind turbines. Physically, wind is described as a complex, turbulent boundary layer flow. The modeling of this flow is an essential task of wind engineering, says Cornelia Kalender. With the help of numerical simulation models and experiments in the boundary layer wind tunnel, Cornelia Kalender and her colleagues can get to the bottom of the effect of wind on structures and the dispersion of materials.

Road construction

It is well known that asphalt is almost exclusively laid hot. In future, asphalt is to be laid at a lower temperature in order to reduce the emission of aerosols and vapors that are difficult to evaporate. Work is also being carried out on how petroleum-based bitumen can be replaced as a binder in asphalt by bio-based, sustainable alternative materials. Dr.-Ing. Nina Nytus, a member of staff at the Chair of Road Construction, and her colleagues are researching these and many other issues in various projects. “In the DFG project ‘Postcarbone Road - The endless reuse cycle of asphalt’, I am analyzing the multiple aging and rejuvenation of bitumen, mastic and asphalt with project partners from the TU Berlin and the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing in order to finally derive a prediction model for the performance properties of asphalt,” explains Nina Nytus.

You can read the articles in the RUB news portal here:

• In the wind tunnel
• Building sustainable roads

The science magazine Rubin is published twice a year in spring and fall. You can download the current issue here. If you are interested, you can have the magazine sent to your home or workplace free of charge or subscribe to the twice-yearly newsletter for the digital edition.