Dive Brief:

• In a Swiss laboratory, scientists have devised an alloy that can be used as reinforcing material set into slits in cast concrete and used to pre-stress it by activating a property that makes the metal want to return to a shape from which it was deformed.
• Metals with the property are called shape-memory alloys, and the one the scientists at Empa Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology created is an iron-manganese-silicon compound, and it solves a problem that previous alloys had because they required so much heat to return to shape that it would damage the concrete.
• The three-part alloy activates at 160 degrees Celsius after electric current is applied through it, the researchers say.

Dive Insight:

The scientists say that being able to use memory-shape alloys during the construction process and activating them afterward will prove cheaper than current methods for pre-stressing concrete in applications such as bridges. First, however, it needs to be capable of being made in industrial quantities, and a spin-off company has been set up to try to take the project from the lab to a factory.