Biomimetic cementitious construction materials for next-generation infrastructure

Abstract

The resilience of civil engineering structures has traditionally been associated with the design of individual elements with sufficient capacity to respond appropriately to adverse events. This has traditionally employed ‘robust’ design procedures that focus on defining safety factors for individual adverse events and providing redundancy. As such, construction materials have traditionally been designed to specific technical specifications. Furthermore, material degradation is viewed as inevitable and mitigation necessitates expensive maintenance regimes. Based on a better understanding of natural biological systems, biomimetic materials that have the ability to adapt and respond to their environment have recently been developed. This fundamental change has the potential to facilitate the creation of a wide range of ‘smart’ materials and intelligent structures that can self-sense and self-repair without the need for external intervention which could transform infrastructure. This paper presents an overview of the development, application and commercial perspectives of a suite of complementary self-healing cementitious systems that have been developed as part of a national team and led to the first UK full-scale field trials on self-healing concrete.

Microbially Induced Calcium Carbonate Precipitation (MICP) and Its Potential in Bioconcrete: Microbiological and Molecular Concepts

“…In the UK, the Resilient Materials for Life project led by Cardiff University in partnership with the universities of Cambridge, Bath and Bradford, have developed four self-healing techniques; the use of microcapsules containing mineral healing agents, bacterial healing, the use of a shape memory polymer based system for crack closure and the delivery of a mineral healing agent through a vascular flow network. They observed that all four techniques showed significant results of accelerated crack healing in the range of 14-28% and the Whole-Life Costing (WLC) analysis indicated a ∼12% reduction in the cost of repairs and maintenance (Teall et al, 2016;Al-Tabbaa et al, 2018, 2019Davies et al, 2018). However, the microencapsulation technique did not show a significant effect on the compressive strength.…”

First UK field application and performance of microcapsule-based self-healing concrete

“…A national UK team, from the universities of Cambridge, Cardiff and Bath, has come together, through research council funding, to develop the first generation of self-healing cementitious systems in the UK to address cracks across many length scales [31][32][33]. This led to the development of a suit of complementary technologies namely microcapsules, calcite precipitation bacteria, shape memory polymer tendons and vascular networks (Fig 1b).…”

Development and Application of Novel Sodium Silicate Microcapsule-Based Self-Healing Oil Well Cement

“…The self-healing ability of cementitious systems can be enhanced by engineered additions of external healing agents, and this usually depends on the crack size and the nature of the cementitious matrix [6] as shown in Figure 1 [7]. Enhanced autogenous healing can be facilitated through non-encapsulated additions which include fibers, mineral or crystalline additives and superabsorbent polymers.…”

“…Autonomic self-healing systems developed for cementitious materials, depending on the crack size[7].…”