I-Corps: Smart Cement Technology

University Of Houston, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is on revolutionizing the real-time Structural Health Monitoring (the entire concrete or other composites where smart cement is use as the binder becomes a 3D sensor and there are no buried sensors) and also pre-warning of infrastructure, building and pipeline failures, fire hazard and seismic activity. This will reduce the loss of life, accidents and disruption of economic activity by enhancing quality control and monitoring throughout the lifetime of the structures. The real-time monitoring will also help maintain the critical structures in a cost effective manner. Smart cement technology can also be used in quality control of mixing concrete with various types of additives and also the curing of the concrete under various environments and also predicting the long-term properties and strength of concrete and other materials where smart cement is used as the binder. The smart cement technology can be used with any type of cement and has a very wide application in civil infrastructures and also oil and gas industry for cementing wells. Also smart cement blocks can be used in old structures and residential buildings for monitoring which will also become a very popular commercial market for smart cement applications. This I-Corps project will commercialize the Smart Cement which has been recently developed and proven to be a highly sensing and sensitive material to changes in stresses, temperature, cracks contamination, aging and degradation. The smart cement is technically known as chemo-thermo-piezoresistive cement and behavior models have been developed to predict the behavior of the smart cement. The monitoring parameter is the change in electrical resistivity of the material in any direction. This technology can be easily adopted in any type of cement, which is the largest manufactured material in the world annually. Since less than 0.1% of additive (no nano particles) is used in the cement, it is a very cost effective modification and making the cement to be very sensing without changing any other properties and also complies with all the environmental requirements. When this smart cement is used to make the concrete (cement + aggregate) or binders in other composites (example cement mortar and cement bricks) it will make the material to be very sensing in 3 dimension (3D) and pick changes in any direction. The sensing characteristics can be used from the time of mixing to the entire service life of the structures. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.