Hizami Abdullah 2018 IOP Conf. Ser. Mater. Sci. Eng. 431 062003
Hizami Abdullah 2018 IOP Conf. Ser. Mater. Sci. Eng. 431 062003
Muhd Afiq Hizami Abdullah1, 3, Nurul Ain Harmiza Abdullah1, 4 and Mohamad
Fahrurrazi Tompang 2, 5
1
Fakulti Teknologi Kejuruteraan, Universiti Malaysia Perlis
2
School of Bioprocess, Universiti Malaysia Perlis
3
[email protected]
4
[email protected]
5
[email protected]
Self-healing concrete is a type of concrete that able to autogenously fill up cracks without any
intervention from external sources. Various methods of producing a self-healing concrete are
available in the previous researches but using bacterial as self-healing agent enables the concrete
to be environmentally friendly. This paper reviews the elements that are important in developing
a bacterial self-healing concrete. The elements include type of bacteria and the criteria needed
in selecting a bacteria as source of healing agent. Most of the researches used Bacillus genus but
quite a few have produced bacterial self-healing concrete from non-axenic bacteria. There are
also various bacteria and nutrients concentration being incorporated inside self-healing concrete
which resulted in wide range of performance. Most of the researches indicates that addition of
bacteria with or without nutrients affect mechanical properties of concrete negatively. However
some of the studies indicates the opposite result on mechanical strength. Hence, the influence
of bacterial and nutrient addition on concrete strength would also depends on the method of
incorporating them. Permeability of concrete could also be improved by the addition of self-
healing bacteria. The permeability has been measured in term of chloride migration, gas
permeability and carbonation which indicates enhancement compared to plain cement mortar.
1. Introduction
Application of concrete as construction material are becoming wider. Variety of structure is built using
concrete material due to its abundance availability and high workability. Concrete also produces a
strong material especially in term of compressive strength. This broad application of concrete in various
structure elements require periodically inspection and maintenance. Concrete possess brittleness that
would likely experience cracking due to creep, shrinkage or overstressed. Maintenance work should be
carried out on these defects to avoid further damage to the whole structure. Cracks in concrete will
allow penetration of detrimental substance that may cause carbonation in concrete or corrosion to the
embedded steel reinforcement. The permeability of substances would also lessen the aesthetic value of
structure. The maintenance work that need to be carried out could be complicated should the cracking
occurred at area with limited access like bridge spanning over broad river or live traffic. The financial
cost of repairing such structure would be expensive. The work is also very hazardous to the maintenance
worker and people in the vicinity. Concrete with ability to fill the gap due to crack autogenously would
solve this maintenance issue. The cost can be reduced especially in term of periodical inspection work.
Concrete that can fill the crack autogenously is considered as self-healing concrete. Self-healing
concrete has been produced previously by producing concrete with excessive portion cement in the
overall mixture. The excess portion of cement would be un-hydrated and will perform chemical reaction
with water that penetrate the hardened concrete through cracks to produce new cementitious bonding.
Besides that, chemical substances have also been used as self-healing agent in the concrete. One of the
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Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd 1
14th International Conference on Concrete Engineering and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 431 (2018) 062003 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/431/6/062003
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chemical product is sodium silicate solution which form C-S-H gel by reacting calcium hydroxide inside
the concrete [1]. However, the healing agent is chemically synthesized and not environmentally
friendly. Recent researches provide alternative solution to chemically synthesized healing agent with
bacterial as healing agent. Bacteria of genus Bacillus could precipitate calcium carbonate (CaCO 3) to
seal the cracks from inside the concrete. Bacterial self-healing agent was able to reseal crack of 0.3mm
in 20 days [2]. The use of bacteria as self-healing agent has started since Jonkers et al (2010)
incorporated the bacteria during mixing of concrete rather than using it as repair material such as in
Ramachandran et al.(2001) [3] [4]. The study indicates the ability of this bacteria to survive high
alkalinity of concrete environment.
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14th International Conference on Concrete Engineering and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 431 (2018) 062003 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/431/6/062003
1234567890‘’“”
water and 11h of dry condition. The amount of water introduced to sample is lower by 22 hours
compared to study by Tziviloglou et al (2016) yet achieving a comparable result. However, the addition
of hydrogel in the concrete resulted in delay hardening of concrete. This has caused sample to be
demoulded only after 48hours in mould. Hydrogel may have interrupted the formation of C-S-H gel
which caused retardation in concrete setting. Coating of self-healing agent that contains hydrogel,
spores and nutrient may prevent the retardation effect.
Figure 1. Schematic diagram showing the process of producing CERUP at 5L scale [10].
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14th International Conference on Concrete Engineering and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 431 (2018) 062003 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/431/6/062003
1234567890‘’“”
70
Compressive Strength (MPA)
60
50
1
40 2
3
30 4
5
20 6
7
10 8
9
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Age (Days)
Figure 2. (1) Tziviloglou et al (2016) [11], (2) Andalib et al (2016) [9], (3) Krishnapriya et al (2015)
[8], (4) Ramachandran et al (2001) [4],(5) Achal et al (2011) [17], (6) Da Silva et al (2015) [10], (7)
Raffat et al (2016) [15] (8) Jonkers et al (2010) [3], (9) Chahal et al (2012) [14]
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14th International Conference on Concrete Engineering and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 431 (2018) 062003 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/431/6/062003
1234567890‘’“”
0.6
0.5
Crack Width Healed (mm)
0.4
0.3 1
2
0.2 3
0.1
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Healing Duration (Days)
Figure 3. (1) Wang JY et al (2014), (2) Da Silva et al (2014), (3) Wasim et al (2016)
Conclusion
This paper highlight the production processes that have been investigated and the performance that have
been measure on bacterial self-healing concrete. In conclusion, any type of bacteria with ability to
metabolically convert calcium source into calcium carbonate can be used in producing autogenous
healing concrete. It is important to provide protection to bacteria in concrete to sustain the self-healing
ability throughout the life span of concrete. Bacterial concrete has lower strength compared to
conventional concrete about the same composition. However, bacterial concrete able to fully repair
visible crack autogenously compared to conventional concrete.
References
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14th International Conference on Concrete Engineering and Technology IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 431 (2018) 062003 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/431/6/062003
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[21] M. Alazhari, T. Sharma , A. Heath , R. Cooper and K. Paine, "Application of expanded perlite
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[22] J. Xu and W. Yao, "Multiscale mechanical quantification of self-healing concrete incorporating
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[23] S. A. L. de Koster, R. M. Mors, H. W. Nugterena, H. M. Jonkers, G. M. H. Meesters and J. R.
van Ommen, "Geopolymer coating of bacteria-containing granules for use in self-healing
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