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| 'Smart Concrete' could improve levees The failure of levees in the wake of Hurricane Katrina points out the need for new technologies to strengthen levees and monitor their reliability, according to Deborah D. L. Chung, Ph.D., a University at Buffalo materials scientist and inventor of "smart concrete." Chung's smart concrete, patented in 1998, may be one such technology whose time has come for commercial use -- not only in the construction of levees, but for a range of disaster and homeland security applications. With smart concrete, short carbon fibers are added to the conventional concrete mixture. This modification gives the concrete the ability to detect stress and tiny deformations in the concrete. In the presence of structural flaws -- within a levee made of smart concrete, for example -- the concrete's electrical resistance increases. This change can be detected by electrical probes placed on the outside of structures. Similarly, the electrical properties of smart concrete could be used to detect underground stress that builds prior to an earthquake, to monitor building occupancy for intruders or for stragglers during an evacuation, and to monitor traffic flow in an emergency or around U.S. borders, Chung says. Chung, who also has studied the use of continuous carbon fibers in the form of composites, suggests that some levees could be encased in a shell composed of such composites, which are similar to the material used to form the bodies of jet aircraft. According to Chung, use of smart concrete would increase construction costs by 30 percent, which is a main reason industry has not adopted its use, she says. Of course, reconstruction costs after a disaster can run much higher, she points out. write your comments about the article :: © 2005 Construction News :: home page |