Designing repeatable self-healing into cementitious materials

Abstract

Designing self-healing into cementitious materials can open a new world of opportunities for resilient concrete infrastructure under service loading conditions. The self-healing process should be robust as well as repeatable, allowing for self-repair after multiple damage events. The repeatability poses great challenges when self-healing strategies mainly rely on the formation of low-strength calcium carbonate healing product, complicated by the localized cracking behavior of cementitious materials. This study aims at formulating a new cementitious material system with designed physical and chemical characteristics that favour repeatable self-healing. Advanced experimental methods, coupled with micromechanics theory, are adopted to probe and design repeatable self-healing into cementitious materials.