Bendable Congrete That Heals Itself Too
Filed Under: Green Technology on July 11, 2009
Sounds like something right out of Sci-Fi. Right? Or maybe the latest X-Men creation? Well, it’s real and it’s definitely going to change a few things about how we interact with concrete and how architects and designers make buildings.
This flexible, self-healing concrete is being developed at the University of Michigan and has so far proven itself to be much more than even Professor Victor Li, the concrete’s inventor, expected.
The concrete is very much like the standard concrete we see in buildings, footings, curbs, and so forth. The problem is concrete is its very rigidity: that which makes it useful as a strong substance also makes it vulnerable and weak to some types of stress. To alleviate this, some flexibility had to be added without compromising the overall load-bearing strength of the concrete itself.
What Professor Li did was figure out how to form the concrete so that it would crack in a controlled way and then heal those cracks when the bending force was removed.
When concrete is subjected to stress, like an earthquake, flooding, partial demolition of the building, etc., it can strain and crack. With today’s concrete, this means that the stressed and cracked concrete must be demolished and replaced with new concrete (sending the old rubble to the landfill).
With Professor Li’s concrete, the stress will just heal itself when exposed to carbon dioxide (you know, the stuff they’re trying to ban) and moisture. Since these are readily available in the atmosphere anyway (thanks in no small part to Al Gore), the concrete is basically self-contained.
In tests so far, the new concrete formula has been able to withstand loads similar to what equivalent-grade concrete would be able to, but has also been able to take tensile strains up to 3%. What this means is that a 10-foot slab of this stuff can be bent three inches out of whack without breaking. Best of all, it recovers and restores itself to full strength again afterwards.
How cool is that?
Iron would stay bent (or deformed) after a 3% bend and regular concrete shatters when subjected to higher than 1% strains, so this is definitely impressive.
This could mean that future buildings could be much better able to withstand earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding, and more without failing.
That’s awesome. To find out more about Professor Li’s concrete, visit Michigan Today.
