Analysis of the scientific evolution of self-healing asphalt pavements: Toward sustainable road materials

Abstract

Although researchers have investigated the concept of self-healing asphalt materials for decades, only recently has scientific interest in methods triggering self-healing properties of asphalt increased. Self-healing technologies are expected to increase the service life of materials and reduce their maintenance, decreasing raw materials consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and negative effects of construction on climate change. Self-healing of asphalt materials has the potential to make important changes in the road construction materials industry, making it more sustainable; however, the literature has not exactly reported a quantitative analysis of the progress or evolution of this scientific topic. Bibliometric and science mapping analyses are methodologies to study through quantitative analysis, the scientific evolution of any knowledge area. Hence, this paper presents a bibliometric and science mapping analysis of the self-healing technology of 292 selected documents found in widely accepted scientific databases, using SciMAT open access software. In addition, the article presents a description of the most important articles based on SciMAT analysis. The results of the study show that the production of documents related to self-healing has been growing since 1994, reaching a peak in 2018 with 60 published articles (21% of the total). In addition, China and the USA have an outstanding performance in the production of documents followed by the Netherlands, UK, Spain, and Chile, although the European continent has the largest number of countries actively developing this research area. The analysis also showed that the most productive authors in the topic of study are Wu, S.P., Little, D.N., Lytton, R.L., and Garcia, A. In addition, analysis showed an increasing development of self-healing pavements topics in new and more specific research areas such as microwave heating, nanocomposites, and microcapsules. Overall, this analysis shows that self-healing asphalt materials technology has been catching the scientific interest of many researchers in recent years; hence, there are many techniques and areas that are being developed and are expanding the branches and different niches in this research area. Therefore, opportunities for researchers to work in this field are developing and are also far from reaching a stage of maturity.