Smart casting of concrete structures by active rheology and stiffening control (ERC advanced grant project)

Concrete production processes do not take fiill advantage of the rheological potential of ffesh cementitious materials, and are still largely labour-driven and sensitive to the human factor. The recently started ERC Advanced Grant project 'SmartCast' proposes a new concrete casting concept to transform the concrete industry into a higlily automated technological industry. Currently, the rheological properties of the concrete are defined by mix design and mixing procedure without any further active adjustment during casting. The goal of the 'SmartCast' project is the active control of concrete rheology during casting, and the active triggering of early stiffening of the concrete as soon as it is put in place. The ground-breaking idea to achieve this goal, is to develop concrete with actively controllable rheology by adding admixtures responsive to extemally activated electromagnetic frequencies. Inter-disciplinary insights are important to achieve these goals, including inputs from concrete technology, polymer Science, electrochemistry, rheology and computational fluid dynamics. In the short term, achieving the active control of the pumping slip layer will have an immediate impact on concrete industry, as this can be applied on pump trucks without interfering with the clements to be cast. In the longer term, making possible concrete casting with active control of flow and stiffening will be a totally new paradigm for concrete industry. Moving from ‘passively’ relying on evolving properties of ffesh concrete, to ‘actively’ controlling rheology and stiffening will revolutionize concrete industry and bring quality levels to higher standards. The developed active rheology control will also provide a fundamental basis for the development of future-proof 3D printing techniques in concrete industry. For society, it will mean more reliable construction, with less damage cases and less failures, while better preserving the environment (reduced carbon footprint, reduced noise and vibration levels, reduced exposure of technicians to safety and health risks).

ISBN:9782351582053

Jaar van publicatie:2018

Toegankelijkheid:Closed