Multi-scale Study of Ecological, Self-healing, and Nano-engineered Self-centering Cementitious Composites for Modular Construction

加拿大面临严重的民用基础设施两难境地。建筑活动消耗了从地壳中提取的50%的材料，产生了近一半的固体废物，而建筑环境排放的温室气体(GHG)约占40%。一致认为，民用基础设施继续过早恶化。延期维护造成了大量老化建筑的积压，造成了名副其实的国民财富流失和基础设施赤字，据估计，赤字高达1250亿美元。这种情况隐约可见会扼杀经济繁荣；我们的民用基础设施的危险状况(例如蒙特利尔协和式高架桥的坍塌)不断出现。这项研究渴望成为解开这一困境的可行举措。它将创造出新型的生态胶凝复合材料，这种复合材料可以在侵蚀性环境中长期暴露。这种粘结剂将主要使用工业副产品进行工程设计，从而减少温室气体排放和垃圾处理。这种粘结剂的性能将通过使用纳米种子来增强，以产生极低的孔隙率和卓越的耐久性。它们将进一步被赋予自我修复能力，以减轻使用寿命的损害。此外，新的复合材料将使用耐腐蚀的形状记忆合金进行增强，这些合金提供强度和延展性，但可以自我修复，并在过度加载后恢复其原始形状。这一新系统将配备射频识别和压阻传感器，以便为结构健康监测提供信息。建筑信息建模(BIM)将被用来打造一种使用生态、自我修复和智能复合材料的模块化建筑概念。这一新的建设模式的性能将通过广泛的多尺度测试来展示。它的寿命周期成本将具有竞争力，因为它具有非凡的耐用性和模块化结构的节省，同时生产具有弹性和可持续的民用基础设施。申请者在这一领域取得了重大进展，并准备进一步推进这一倡议，前提是通过NSERC发现赠款提供持续支持。这项研究的意义可能是至高无上的；它为同时解决基础设施耐久性和可持续性问题提供了一种整体方法。这项研究的影响可能是无处不在的，其学术意义应该会促进可持续和智能建筑领域的知识，使加拿大处于这个日益增长的有利可图和竞争激烈的市场的最前沿。参与的6名研究生和5名本科生将获得基本技能和知识，以领导这一领域在工业和学术界的变革性进步。

Canada faces an acute civil infrastructure dilemma. Construction activities consume 50% of materials extracted from the earth’s crust and generate nearly half of the total solid waste, while the built environment accounts for about 40% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In chorus, civil infrastructure continues to deteriorate prematurely. Deferred maintenance has created a colossal backlog of aging structures, inflicting a veritable drain of national wealth and an infrastructure deficit evaluated at $125 Billion. Such a situation looms to stifle economic prosperity; stark reminders of the perilous condition of our civil infrastructure (e.g. collapse of Montreal’s Concorde Viaduct) continue to emerge. This research aspires to be a viable initiative for unraveling this dilemma. It will coin novel ecological cementitious composites that can endure very long exposure in aggressive environments. Such binders will be engineered primarily using industrial by-products, thus reducing both GHG emissions and landfill disposal. The performance of such binders will be enhanced using nano-seeding to produce extremely low porosity and superior durability. They will further be endowed with self-healing ability to mitigate service life damage. Moreover, the new composite will be reinforced with corrosion-resistant shape memory alloys that provide strength and ductility, yet can self-repair and regain their original shape subsequent to excessive loading. This new system will be instrumented with Radio-Frequency Identification and piezo-resistive sensors in order to provide information for structural health monitoring. Building Information Modeling (BIM) will be used to forge a modular construction concept using the ecological, self-healing and smart composite. The performance of this new construction paradigm will be demonstrated through extensive multi-scale testing. It will have a competitive life cycle cost owing to exceptional durability and savings of modular construction, while producing resilient and sustainable civil infrastructure.  The Applicant has made significant progress in this area and is poised to further advancing this initiative provided a sustained support via an NSERC Discovery Grant. The significance of the research could be paramount; it offers a holistic approach to solving infrastructure durability and sustainability problems simultaneously. The impact of the research could be pervasive and its scholarly significance should advance knowledge in the area of sustainable and smart construction, putting Canada at the far front of this growing lucrative and competitive market. The participating six graduate and five undergraduate students will gain essential skills and knowledge to lead transformative advances in this field both in industry and academia.