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

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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.