Summary
ReSHEALience is developing Ultra High Durability Concretes (UHDC) to upgrade the Ultra High Performance and Textile Reinforced Concrete technologies and enhance, thanks to functionalizing nanoadditions, the durability of structures even in highly aggressive scenarios. Employed nanoadditions are able to handle crack initiation and stimulate self-healing, making the material able to self-govern its performance in the intended scenario. The use of UHDC can lead to lower environmental impacts, as compared to equivalent traditional concretes, in case studies dealing with strategical sectors for economic growth and climate change, such as blue growth and green energy production from geothermal power plants and off-shore wind farms. This will contribute to build longer lasting artefacts, reducing maintenance operations and overcoming current technological limitations, making energy production from renewable sources more profitable and contributing to reduce our dependence from fossil sources.
Result description
A conceptual approach to the formulation and characterization of UHDC: the material is able to guarantee the stability of its mechanical performance upon prolonged exposure to aggressive conditions. thanks to the synergy of crystalline self-healing stimulators and functionalizing nano-alumina and nanocellulose additions.
A tailored innovative durability-based design approach which encompasses into a LCA/LCC/SLCA framework, serviceability/ultimate limit state limit state predictions focused on the time evolution of the structural performance, allowing to quantitatively determine the structure service life.
A novel structural design and construction concept for infrastructures in geothermal power plants, leading to reduce environmental impact from 11% to 71%, with reference to the 7 EPD indicators, while reducing from 3 to 5 times the consumption of raw materials.
A novel structural design and construction concept for off-shore wind tower platforms which could contribute to overcome the limitations of current steel solutions, guaranteeing the same structural performance, a longer service life in the off-shore environment and a reduced consumption of raw materials from 3 to 4 times.
Addressing target audiences and expressing needs
- To raise awareness and possibly influence policy
- Grants and Subsidies
Support in fostering the creation of demonstration/dissemination networks to raise awareness about the possibilities offered by the developed advanced materials (in their concept and design approach) incorporating life cycle perspective into the current “way of thinking” of the whole value- and decision-making chain. Target audience will be professionals at any level of the civil engineering and construction industry chain, and also public standard/code writing bodies and institution which can help in implementing a three level innovation management scheme PRODUCT-PROCESS-CONTEXT.
- Public or private funding institutions
- EU and Member State Policy-makers
- Private Investors
R&D, Technology and Innovation aspects
We are currently building, with materials developed and characterized in the project, six pilots (most of them in full scale). The next step the project consortium is undertaking aims at maximizing the outreach of these demonstration activities in terms of technical education but also raising public awareness about the significance of the developed innovation beyond the technical.
Result submitted to Horizon Results Platform by AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DEINVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
