Difference this research could make
Many construction materials such as concrete are costly to maintain and environmentally harmful to produce. Producing cement to make concrete is responsible for 8% of C02 emissions worldwide.
RM4L is looking at ways of designing concrete structures to be more sustainable and resilient.
Successful RM4L programmes could see reductions in carbon emissions as well as the upkeep costs of some concrete structures.
How the work was done
One RM4L project has seen engineers and researchers design a scheme to trial ‘self-healing’ concrete at a site in Wales run by engineering company Costain.
The programme aims to create a system which senses damage and repairs it without human intervention.
Researchers cast 6 concrete walls at the test site – each wall containing different technologies.
One technology saw the project team trialling shape-shifting memory polymers to see if they could repair large cracks. Also known as smart materials, these can change shape when prompted by an external stimulus such as a temperature change or moisture.
Another technique saw researchers pumping organic healing agents through a network of thin tunnels in concrete to help fix damage.
A third experiment saw the team embed tiny capsules into concrete. These contained bacteria that reacted when cracks occurred.
Researchers loaded the concrete samples to create cracks. They then monitored how effective each technique was at repairing those cracks.