Strength Recovery Tests

Last week Quantao performed some strength recovery tests of beams on an elastic foundation.
The set up used for these tests is given below.

The test procedure consists of breaking the notched beam on the elastic foundation, heating the fractured beam, resting the heated beam for 6 hours and finally breaking the healed beam again.

The healing index is defined as the original strength divided by the healed strength).

 

The fractured beam showing the two fracture surfaces at the location of the notch is given below.

 Next figure shows typical loading curves of original beam and healed beam (different heating temperatures)

 The strength recovery ratios are presenteed in the next figure.

The fractured beam cannot heal the crack by itself at 5°C and 20 °C: the crack is too big to be healed by natural healing. Induction heating can heal the crack and the extent of healing depends on the heating temperature. The optimal heating temperature is 85°C to obtain highest strength recovery. Further heating causes binder drainage and swelling problems, which offsets the healing benefit.

Testing Different Coils

Last week we spend together with our partner SGS-Intron a day at the producer of the induction machine that we are using to heat and heal the asphalt. We once again found out that the mechanism of induction heating is influenced by many factors. To find the right combination of fibres in the material (length, cross section, amount, distribution) and settings of the machine (frequency, power, coil design etc) needs some insight knowledge, but also some trial and error.

We can not say that we had nothing to choose from..............



Breijn Symposium

Breijn is organising a symposium series this month about "Flexibilitiet in Levensduur"
Erik gave a presentation on Self Healing Materials yesterday. Last week Prof Sybrand van der Zwaag of Aerospace Engineering  of TU Delft was the guest speaker and next week Prof Andre de Boer from TU Twente will take the floor. More info on the symposium can be found on the Breijn-website.

Main topic of the presentation was Self Healing Concrete and Asphalt.
The Self Healing Asphalt part was dealing with the subject on this blog.
More info on the Self Healing Concrete projects can be found on http://www.selfhealingconcrete.blogspot.com/

At the end of the symposium all participants received the Self Healing Breijn-Cube. Guess what kind of material this is?.....