Poly(ethylene-co-tetrafluoroethylene)-based permanent motorway roofs equipped with night lighting sources and thin film solar cells
Civil Engineering and Architecture, 2011
This article presents the idea of providing newly-built motorways with permanent transparent roof... more This article presents the idea of providing newly-built motorways with permanent transparent roofs equipped with light sources and thin film photovoltaic solar cells, as a way to significantly improve road safety (by eliminating most of the problems associated with adherence changes on non-dry pavements and with reduced visibility), to improve road transport efficiency during natural precipitation periods, to drastically reduce road maintenance costs associated with snow removal and road infrastructure damage due to water, and also as a way to generate electrical energy. I show that poly(ethylene-co-tetrafluoroethylene) could be successfully used as the main constructive material for permanent motorway roofs, with part of the surface equipped with thin film solar cells. For Romania, assuming a 5000-km motorway network covered with ETFE roofs equipped with 20% peak efficiency photovoltaic cells on 60% of the roof surface and considering a yield correction factor of 0.8 (due to the co...
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Papers by Mihai Grecu