Self Healing Concrete

Everyone knows the widespread use and characteristics of concrete, its one of the oldest building materials in architecture history. Though extremely durable and hard, this material is still susceptible to wear and tear damages like cracks overtime or under impact. This is one of the issues that plague any types of man made material to date.

So whats the solution? Yes, in order to counter these damages, we need either drones or specialised robots to constantly "repair" damaged materials or structures, or have them heal themselves, just like any biological entity could!

Therefore bio-technologists have created the self healing concrete. As standard concrete is made with cement, aggregate and admixtures, now with this futuristic concrete, its ingredients include mixtures of special bacteria and capsules of calcium lactate. 

Basically when cracks form, the water particles that could get in, activates these capsules and trigger the bacteria to ingest it, and then produce calcite which conveniently fill the gaps or cracks overtime. So with this cycle in place, these naturally occurring cracks will also heal by themselves without human intervention.

However there are still several challenges that these scientists need to overcome to make such concrete commercially viable and usable, but its definitely huge step towards the right direction. 

Watch the video below to learn more on its process! What other materials could be the next self healing candidate?