Durability of self-healing concrete

Application of self-healing concrete reduces the need for expensive maintenance and repair actions. However, the durability of self-healing concrete has only been scarcely investigated. Here, recent results are presented regarding the resistance of self-healing concrete to chloride ingress. For self-healing concrete with macro-encapsulated polyurethane, chloride profiles and electron probe microanalysis indicated that this mechanism was efficient to reduce the chloride penetration into the crack and from the crack into the concrete matrix [1]. Furthermore, the corrosion behaviour of reinforced concrete specimens subjected to cyclic exposure with a NaCl solution was studied [2]. The electrochemical measurements indicated that autonomous crack healing could significantly reduce the corrosion in the propagation stage. No visual damage could be detected on the rebars after 44 weeks of exposure. On the contrary, cracked specimens without integrated self-healing mechanism, reached a state of active corrosion after 10 weeks of exposure and after 26 weeks clear pitting damage was observed on the rebars. While self-healing by encapsulated polyurethane is complete after one day, bacteria-based products take several weeks to heal a 300 µm crack. Bacterial granules containing denitrifying cultures released nitrite as an intermediate metabolic product which protected the reinforcement during the crack healing process [3].