Use of innovative construction materials - the next step
This is a free lunchtime webinar and a follow on seminar from the event that took place on 20 July 2016 to discuss issues that construction practitioners have when choosing sustainable and resilient materials for their projects.
Background
The resilience of building and civil engineering structures is typically associated with the design of individual elements such that they have sufficient capacity or potential to react in an appropriate manner to adverse events. Traditionally this has been achieved by using 'robust' design procedures that focus on defining safety factors for individual adverse events and providing redundancy. As such, construction materials are designed to meet a prescribed specification, material degradation is viewed as inevitable and mitigation necessitates expensive maintenance regimes.
The Materials for Life (M4L) project team have developed a multi-scale self-healing system in concrete using a range of interdisciplinary technologies. This will include both autogenous and autonomic self-healing materials and adaptable, self-sensing and self-repairing structures. The EPSRC funded project is a collaboration between Cardiff University, University of Cambridge and University of Bath. The project has investigated individual and combined healing techniques in the laboratory and at the field-scale. The individual healing techniques address damage at various length and time scales. These include encapsulating healing agents, bacterial healing, crack closure using shape memory polymer tendons and repeated supply of healing agents through vascular networks. Amalgamating these techniques to form a multi-scale healing system has shown to improve the overall healing efficiency with respect to strength recovery. Costain, the project’s industrial partners, have built a full-scale concrete structure in South Wales, which includes 5 wall panels incorporating different combinations of self-healing techniques. This project has been an important step in evaluating the feasibility of self-healing concrete.
CIRIA held a very successful seminar on 20 July 2016 to discuss how practitioners might make informed choices and take advantage of such innovative self-healing construction materials. This webinar will consider the findings of this event and how future research might take account of the current barriers to the adoption of these innovative materials.
It will also explore how innovative self-healing materials might be
applied in construction projects, the next steps for the Materials for Life
(M4L) project and what future research into self-healing and
self-diagnosing construction materials should focus on.
Why attend
- consider the findings of the seminar on 20 July 2016
- present the results from the M4L project and how these might influence the application of self-healing materials
- discuss issues in regards to how appropriate materials are chosen for construction projects
- highlight problems with using new and innovative materials e.g. Self-healing materials
- explore ways in which construction materials could be more resilient to climate change
Programme
12.00 Welcome and introduction
12.10 The benefits of innovation – A contractor’s perspective
Oliver Teall, Costain
12.30 What are biomimetic self-healing construction materials and findings of the
seminar on 20 July 2016
Bob Lark, Cardiff University
13.00 The next steps for self-healing materials
Diane Gardner, Cardiff University
13.20 Questions and discussion
14.00 Close
Who should attend
Infrastructure clients, developers, house builders, LA, contactors, consultants, regulators, insurers, building material specialists
When
13 September 2016
12.00 - 14.00 (Log on open from 11.30am)
Fees
Free to attend
Booking
If you are having problems registering for this event online please contact Patrick Williams on 020 7549 3300 or email [email protected].