Dive Brief:
- In a cracking driveway leading to a parking garage at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is a 4-by-15-foot patch of concrete that a graduate student hopes will demonstrate how much better this compound than conventional mixes.
- The new mix is a type known as superhydrophobic engineered cementitious composite (SECC), which both rejects water infiltration by encouraging it to bead up and roll off and can flex rather than break.
- Mixed into the material are unwoven polyvinyl alcohol fibers that prevent small cracks from becoming large ones, instead allowing for microcracks too small for water to infiltrate and kept from growing by the fibers.
Dive Insight:
Associate Professor Konstantin Sobolev, in whose lab civil engineering graduate student Scott Muzenski made the material, says that the new compound will be more expensive. However, he sees savings from a service life of perhaps 120 years compared with conventional reinforced concrete that in Wisconsin lasts 40 to 50 years at best and fails in 30 years in 10% of bridge decks.