Uses of Smart Materials in Construction
Smart Materials in Construction: Smart building materials, also recognized as intelligent materials, are those who have the potential to react in a useful and regulated manner to variations in their surrounding environment to which they are subjected to.
Mechanical pressure, electric field, or variations in temperature, humidity, pH, and lighting can all be used as inputs to alter the properties of smart materials.
Their specific characteristics make them indispensable in a wide variety of engineering and scientific fields. They are applied in projects related to structural engineering projects to improve the structure’s durability, comfort, and energy consumption.
Uses of Smart Materials in Construction
- As used in smart buildings, intelligent concrete (a combination of carbon fibers and concrete) is able to detect tiny structural defects including cracks. In comparison to traditional concrete, smart concrete possesses increased capacity and strength. It can be utilized to block electromagnetic fields and to improve the conductivity properties of concrete. In loading and unloading conditions, smart concrete can lose and recover its conductivity, acting as both a building medium and a sensor device. Smart concrete is critical in the building of road pavements because it acts as a traffic-sensing tracker and even removes ice on roads and airfields through the winter season when snowfall occurs.
- Smart materials can be used in the construction of intelligent buildings. Vibration reduction, noise prevention, protection, and efficiency are all enhanced by smart materials.
- In smart building design, for environmental control and structural health tracking.
- It was previously used to transform the quality, convenience, and security of people and properties in smart buildings.
- Intelligent materials help mitigate the consequences of earthquakes.
- Strain monitoring in marine and rail transport sectors using embedded fiber optic sensors.
- Intelligent materials enables the construction of intelligent bridges, especially cable-stayed bridges with a wider span, to prevent increased vulnerability to vibrations generated by atmospheric factors such as wind, or traffic. As a result, the structure needed less maintenance and its reaction could be tracked.
- They are used to track and test the stability of civil engineering systems.
- Smart materials installed in buildings are used to track the stability of bridges, dams, and offshore oil-drilling towers, with fiber-optic sensors identifying danger zones.
- They can be applied in repairing concrete cracks where a reinforcing bar made of a super-elastic smart material is used.
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