Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Self-healing material
Summary
Self-healing materials are artificial or synthetically created substances that have the built-in ability to automatically repair damages to themselves without any external diagnosis of the problem or human intervention. Generally, materials will degrade over time due to fatigue, environmental conditions, or damage incurred during operation. Cracks and other types of damage on a microscopic level have been shown to change thermal, electrical, and acoustical properties of materials, and the propagation of cracks can lead to eventual failure of the material. In general, cracks are hard to detect at an early stage, and manual intervention is required for periodic inspections and repairs. In contrast, self-healing materials counter degradation through the initiation of a repair mechanism that responds to the micro-damage. Some self-healing materials are classed as smart structures, and can adapt to various environmental conditions according to their sensing and actuation properties.
Although the most common types of self-healing materials are polymers or elastomers, self-healing covers all classes of materials, including metals, ceramics, and cementitious materials. Healing mechanisms vary from an instrinsic repair of the material to the addition of a repair agent contained in a microscopic vessel. For a material to be strictly defined as autonomously self-healing, it is necessary that the healing process occurs without human intervention. Self-healing polymers may, however, activate in response to an external stimulus (light, temperature change, etc.) to initiate the healing processes.
A material that can intrinsically correct damage caused by normal usage could prevent costs incurred by material failure and lower costs of a number of different industrial processes through longer part lifetime, and reduction of inefficiency caused by degradation over time.
Roman concrete
The ancient Romans used a form of lime mortar that has been found to have self-healing properties.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related lectures (8)
Materials Testing: Basics and Measurement Errors
Introduces material classes, measurement errors, laboratory practices, and group work dynamics.
Intramolecular Electron Delocalization
Explores intramolecular electron delocalization in organic electronics, covering history, challenges, charge transport, device preparation, and advanced topics.
Clean Order Project
Covers the Clean Order Project, consisting of three deliverables worth 65% of the final grade.
Related publications (166)
CRACK SHIELDING MECHANISMS OF INTERLAYERED EPOXY MATERIALS UNDER QUASI-STATIC AND FATIGUE LOADING
Anastasios Vassilopoulos, Dharun Vadugappatty Srinivasan
This research explores the capability of PEI and PVDF thermoplastic interlayers to arrest cracks in epoxy materials modified with short-glass fibers and core-shell rubber particles. It also investigates the effect of interlayer position, the number of inte ...
Queen's University Belfast2023Related people (30)
Related units (7)
Related concepts (2)
Supramolecular chemistry
Supramolecular chemistry refers to the branch of chemistry concerning chemical systems composed of a discrete number of molecules. The strength of the forces responsible for spatial organization of the system range from weak intermolecular forces, electrostatic charge, or hydrogen bonding to strong covalent bonding, provided that the electronic coupling strength remains small relative to the energy parameters of the component.
Composite material
A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or physical properties and are merged to create a material with properties unlike the individual elements. Within the finished structure, the individual elements remain separate and distinct, distinguishing composites from mixtures and solid solutions.