The University of Illinois will collaborate with researchers and staff from Koch Materials Company to vigorously expand fundamental knowledge of damage mechanisms in reflective crack control systems. The industry-academia partners will address the aforementioned problem through an advanced laboratory testing and instrumentation program, development of new models to field performance data. As the industry partner to this venture, Koch Materials Company will provide: (1) annual matching funds; (2) technical expertise, including access to field installation and performance data; (3) laboratory and field materials for laboratory testing at UIUC, and; (4) mentoring of UIUC students through extended site visits at the national laboratory in Wichita, Kansas, and by serving on doctoral thesis committees. Combined with the University of Illinois "Kent Memorial Scholarship Fund," matching funds are proposed at a level of 168% of the requested NSF GOALI funds. The computational and laboratory facilities available at UIUC to bear upon the proposed research problem are truly world-class, and include the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Advance Transportation Research and Engineering Laboratory (ATREL). As a result of the proposed three-way leveraging, the research team will consist of two cross-discipline faculty members, three doctoral students, one undergraduate research assistant per year, several industry researchers from Koch Materials Company, and at least one student per year from the Summer Graduate Minority Program hosted at ATREL, each summer.
