Multifunctional Nanogenerator‐Integrated Metamaterial Concrete Systems for Smart Civil Infrastructure

Abstract

Creating multifunctional concrete materials with advanced functionalities and mechanical tunability is a critical step toward reimagining the traditional civil infrastructure systems. Here, the concept of nanogenerator‐integrated mechanical metamaterial concrete is presented to design lightweight and mechanically tunable concrete systems with energy harvesting and sensing functionalities. The proposed metamaterial concrete systems are created via integrating the mechanical metamaterial and nano‐energy‐harvesting paradigms. These advanced materials are composed of reinforcement auxetic polymer lattices with snap‐through buckling behavior fully embedded inside a conductive cement matrix. We rationally design their composite structures to induce contact‐electrification between the layers under mechanical excitations/triggering. The conductive cement enhanced with graphite powder serves as the electrode in the proposed systems, while providing the desired mechanical performance. Experimental studies are conducted to investigate the mechanical and electrical properties of the designed prototypes. The metamaterial concrete systems are tuned to achieve up to 15% compressibility under cycling loading. The power output of the nanogenerator‐integrated metamaterial concrete prototypes reaches 330 µW. Furthermore, the self‐powered sensing functionality of the nanogenerator concrete systems for distributed health monitoring of large‐scale concrete structures is demonstrated. The metamaterial concrete paradigm can possibly enable the design of smart civil infrastructure systems with a broad range of advanced functionalities.

Advances in autonomous materials and structures

“…The designed implant is capable to detect the post-surgery bone healing progress in a battery-free manner. Recently, Barri et al [67] implemented the meta-tribomaterials concept to develop novel concrete systems for smart civil infrastructure monitoring, as shown in Figure 3d. The developed smart concrete systems serve as sensing and energy harvesting systems to conduct continuous structural health monitoring.…”

Development of Colloidal Nanosilver as a High-Workability Nanoadditive for Cement Composites: A Mechanistic Approach

“…The application of nanoparticles (NPs) in concrete and its potential benefits for improved strength and durability performance are well acknowledged. − This stems from the fact that the application of supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) finer than cement and the resulting improvements in strength and durability increase with increasing fineness of SCM, which is attributed to packing density enhancement and reduction of calcium hydroxide (CH) content. − The adoption of microsilica and subsequently nanosilica (SiNPs) has been attempted to exploit the benefits of improved packing density and pozzolanic reactivity of the material. − In addition to SiNPs, a wide range of NPs including Al 2 O 3 , TiO 2 , Fe 2 O 3 , CaCO 3 , CuO, etc., have been explored to improve the mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties of cement systems. Of the above, SiNPs on account of their superior pozzolanic and microstructure properties have received wider attention from the researchers.…”

Flexural behaviour of cementitious composites embedded with 3D printed re-entrant chiral auxetic meshes

“…An auxetic foam coated, concrete filled steel composite was tested numerically in [42] for effective damping of seismic waves to less than 10 Hz. Barri et al [43] have developed a conducive metamaterial concrete by filling it into 3D printed polymer auxetic lattices which performed well under cyclic compression load with an ability to conduct electricity for their application in smart civil infrastructure. Chen et al [44] studied the static and dynamic compressive behaviour of 3D printed auxetic lattice reinforced ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) and reported that auxetic lattices increased the energy absorption characteristics of UHPC with enhanced performance due to confining effect of lattices.…”