Jo Johnson, the U.K. minister of state for universities and science, recently met with a professor at Cardiff University (Cardiff, United Kingdom) to discuss new research into the development of self-healing concrete. In Johnson’s meeting with Bob Lark, the Cardiff professor, they discussed how a two-part research project could lead to significant savings in maintenance costs and greater protection for U.K. infrastructure.
The second phase of the project—titled Resilient Materials 4 Life (RM4L)—recently received fresh funding from the U.K. government’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (Swindom, United Kingdom).
Through a £4.7-million investment by EPSRC, the RM4L project aims to build on the success of the first phase of the project, known as Materials 4 Life (M4L). According to the researchers, the M4L work has already spurred major advances in the development of transformative construction materials. These include adaptable, self-diagnosing, and self-healing materials.
The RM4L project will be led by Cardiff University, the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, United Kingdom), the University of Bath (Bath, United Kingdom), and the University of Bradford (Bradford, United Kingdom), as well as industry partners. The overall project cost will be around £6 million, the researchers say, including contributions from partners.
“Resilient Materials 4 Life has the potential to revolutionize the way our infrastructure copes with long-term wear and tear and reduce costs significantly,” says Philip Nelson, CEO of EPSRC.
The M4L project was announced in 2013, and led to a number of developments within these technologies. According to the researchers, these developments include the first U.K. self-healing concrete trials using materials such as shape-memory polymers, microcapsules, and flow networks containing mineral-based healing agents and calcite-forming bacteria.
As part of the new RM4L project, the researchers say they will aim to effect a transformation in construction materials by using the biomimetic approach first adopted in M4L to create smart materials that will adapt to their environment, develop immunity to harmful actions, self-diagnose the onset of deterioration, and self-heal when damaged.
The project’s findings will benefit bodies and companies responsible for the provision, management, and maintenance of built environmental infrastructure, the researchers explain, adding that they will work with industry partners in the construction supply chain throughout the RM4L project.
“This is a wonderful opportunity to build on the exciting findings of M4L to ensure that we address the full range of complex damage and response scenarios that are experienced by construction materials,” says Lark, who also serves as principal investigator for the project. “We are confident that our research will have a significant impact on the sustainability of our infrastructure, and we are very grateful to EPSRC for their vote of confidence in what we are endeavoring to achieve.”