Tube shape alterations for improved concrete pouring survivability in vascular self-healing concrete

摘要

The upscaling of self-healing mechanisms for concrete from simple laboratory experiments to full-size industrial applications remains a huge challenge. In the present work, the potential for upscaling of vascular self-healing is investigated. The vanes of the vascular system, should on one hand be strong enough to survive the rather aggressive concrete production conditions, i.e. casting and pouring, while on the other hand they should be brittle in order to break when a crack in the hardened concrete surpasses them in the hardened concrete. Until now, the search for suitable materials received most attention and often the influence of the geometry was neglected. This work the shape is altered in order to investigate its influence on the survivability of the system under real production conditions. For vascular systems, the vanes should be able to resist the high forces when concrete is poured onto it. A comparison between different shapes is made, i.e. circular, square, droplet and ellipsoidal (i.e. rugby-ball) shaped cross section. From this study it can be seen that the shape is a parameter that could help to survive the pouring process.