Self-healing efficiency of unhydrated cement nuclei for dome-like crack mode in cementitious materials

Nuclei of cement particles left unhydrated in cementitious materials after maturation can provide self-healing capability to micro-cracked matrix under favorable conditions. In this present study under the assumption that self-healing is attributed to the rehydration of the unhydrated cement nuclei in cementitious materials, a model study is conducted to characterize the self-healing efficiency of the hydration reaction of unhydrated cement nuclei on crack. Based on a tortuous crack path around unhydrated cement nuclei in practical cementitious materials, a dome-like crack mode is presented to investigate the self-healing efficiency on cracks. Recurring to a generalized hydration reaction model of cement particles, the analytical self-healing efficiency model quantitatively considers the influence of the volume fraction and particle size distribution of unhydrated cement nuclei randomly distributed in cementitious materials based on the proposed dome-like crack mode. Meanwhile, the healing process of unhydrated cement nuclei in model cementitious materials is simulated and the reliability of these analytical models is verified via computer simulation. Furthermore, model applications suggest that volume fraction of unhydrated cement nuclei in matrix is a key factor and the particle size distribution is also very important for self-healing efficiency in the long time.     

Thermal characteristics of the self-healing response in poly(ethylene-co-methacrylic acid) copolymers.

A class of poly(ethylene-co-methacrylic acid) (EMAA) copolymers and ionomers has shown the unique ability to instantaneously self-heal following ballistic puncture. It is noteworthy that the thermomechanical healing process active in these materials appears to be significantly different in capability and mechanism than any of the other self-repairing systems studied. To better understand this phenomenon, the thermal response during EMAA self-healing was examined. Tests of various damage types, including sawing, cutting and puncture, revealed high-energy transfer damage modes to produce heat and store energy favourable to healing. DSC probed healed specimens revealing they had reached the viscoelastic melt believed requisite to healing response. Low-temperature ballistic experiments demonstrated films continue healing even when punctured at -30 degrees C; analysis showed healing efficacy comparable to room temperature, holding significant pressures of approximately 3 MPa. At the lowest temperature, brittle fracture occurred in one material indicating insufficient heat transfer to store recoverable energy. In total, the results supported the defined healing model and provided additional information on the healing process in both its thermal dependence and general mechanism. Finally, a new DSC method was developed for probing the thermal history of healed films which may lead to a more complete mechanistic model.     

自修复聚氨酯弹性体的制备及性能研究

目的对自修复聚氨酯弹性体的制备工艺及性能进行综述,为制备高修复效率的聚合物提供指导,并指出其未来的发展趋势。方法从聚氨酯弹性体的修复机理出发,收集并分析自修复聚氨酯弹性体的最新研究进展,总结典型自修复聚氨酯弹性体的制备工艺和性能指标;根据修复机理进行分类,对近年来本征型(Diels-Alder反应、Disulfide键、氢键等)和外援型(微胶囊化)自修复聚氨酯弹性体的制备和性能进行综述,并讨论自修复聚氨酯弹性体的修复效率。结论虽然基于不同动态键的自修复聚氨酯弹性体取得了一定的发展,但开发高修复效率的材料仍然是一个巨大的挑战。总结了提高自修复聚氨酯弹性体力学性能的途径,为实现修复性能与力学性能的平衡提供了指导。     

Bioinspired self-healing of advanced composite structures using hollow glass fibres

Self-healing is receiving an increasing amount of worldwide interest as a method to autonomously address damage in materials. The incorporation of a self-healing capability within fibre-reinforced polymers has been investigated by a number of workers previously. The use of functional repair components stored inside hollow glass fibres (HGF) is one such bioinspired approach being considered. This paper considers the placement of self-healing HGF plies within both glass fibre/epoxy and carbon fibre/epoxy laminates to mitigate damage occurrence and restore mechanical strength. The study investigates the effect of embedded HGF on the host laminates mechanical properties and also the healing efficiency of the laminates after they were subjected to quasi-static impact damage. The results of flexural testing have shown that a significant fraction of flexural strength can be restored by the self-repairing effect of a healing resin stored within hollow fibres.     

Reliability assessment models for dependent competing failure processes considering correlations between random shocks and degradations

This article develops reliability models for systems subject to two dependent competing failure processes, considering the correlation between additional damage size on degradation in soft failure process and stress magnitude of shock load in hard failure process, both of which are caused by the same kth random shock. The generalized correlative reliability assessment model based on copulas is proposed, which is then extended to three different shock patterns: (1) δ‐shock, (2) m‐shock, and (3) m‐run shocks. There are some statistical works to be introduced in reliability modeling, including data separation of total degradation amount, inferring the distribution of amount of aging continuous degradation at time t, and fitting copula to the specific correlation. The developed reliability models are demonstrated for an application example of a micro‐electro‐mechanical system.     

Mechanical behaviour and lifetime modelling of self-healing ceramic-matrix composites subjected to thermomechanical loading in air

The simulation of the behaviour and lifetime of composites with self-healing ceramic matrix requires the coupling of models issued from both mechanics and chemistry. The mechanical macromodel is based on a partitioning of damage according to the various degradation mechanisms. Analysis windows on the microscale enable the reconstruction of the crack network indicators and of the opening states of the cracks as functions of the loading. The self-healing mechanism is modelled by creating an oxide plug in an open crack and simulating the diffusion of oxygen through its evolving geometry. An evolution law for fibre strength as a function of oxygen concentration provides an illustration of the influence of complex thermomechanical loading on the composite’s lifetime.     

水泥基材料裂缝自愈合的研究进展

总结了近些年来在水泥基材料裂缝自愈合领域的研究进展，重点论述了两种普通类型的水泥基材料裂缝自愈合的机理、愈合过程、影响因素及评价。普通水泥基材料裂缝愈合机理包括结晶沉淀、结晶渗透，对聚合物水泥基材料，主要包括空气固化愈合、热聚合愈合和温致愈合机理。并提出了进一步的研究方向。     

Surface Modification of Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Nanosheets for Intrinsically Self-Healing Hydrogels with Enhanced Mechanical Properties

Nanocomposites with enhanced mechanical properties and efficient self-healing characteristics can change how the artificially engineered materials’ life cycle is perceived. Improved adhesion of nanomaterials with the host matrix can drastically improve the structural properties and confer the material with repeatable bonding/debonding capabilities. In this work, exfoliated 2H-WS₂ nanosheets are modified using an organic thiol to impart hydrogen bonding sites on the otherwise inert nanosheets by surface functionalization. These modified nanosheets are incorporated within the PVA hydrogel matrix and analyzed for their contribution to the composite's intrinsic self-healing and mechanical strength. The resulting hydrogel forms a highly flexible macrostructure with an impressive enhancement in mechanical properties and a very high autonomous healing efficiency of 89.92%. Interesting changes in the surface properties after functionalization show that such modification is highly suitable for water-based polymeric systems. Probing into the healing mechanism using advanced spectroscopic techniques reveals the formation of a stable cyclic structure on the surface of nanosheets, mainly responsible for the improved healing response. This work opens an avenue toward the development of self-healing nanocomposites where chemically inert nanoparticles participate in the healing network rather than just mechanically reinforcing the matrix by slender adhesion.     

A Multifunctional Electronic Skin Empowered with Damage Mapping and Autonomic Acceleration of Self-Healing in Designated Locations

Integrating self-healing capabilities into soft electronic devices and sensors is important for increasing their reliability, longevity, and sustainability. Although some advances in self-healing soft electronics have been made, many challenges have been hindering their integration in digital electronics and their use in real-world conditions. Herein, an electronic skin (e-skin) with high sensing performance toward temperature, pressure, and pH levels—both at ambient and/or in underwater conditions is reported. The e-skin is empowered with a novel self-repair capability that consists of an intrinsic mechanism for efficient self-healing of small-scale damages as well as an extrinsic mechanism for damage mapping and on-demand self-healing of big-scale damages in designated locations. The overall design is based on a multilayered structure that integrates a neuron-like nanostructured network for self-monitoring and damage detection and an array of electrical heaters for selective self-repair. This system has significantly enhanced self-healing capabilities; for example, it can decrease the healing time of microscratches from 24 h to 30 s. The electronic platform lays down the foundation for the development of a new subcategory of self-healing devices in which electronic circuit design is used for self-monitoring, healing, and restoring proper device function.     

外援型自修复体系及其在环氧基复合材料中的应用

聚合物基自修复材料是近年来国内外的研究热点。根据自修复过程是否需要外加修复剂,聚合物基复合材料自修复方法主要分为外援型自修复和本征型自修复。外援型自修复体系主要包括双环戊二烯修复体系、环氧基修复体系、硫醇基修复体系、甲基丙烯酸缩水甘油酯修复体系、马来酰亚胺修复体系等。着重介绍了这几种自修复体系及其在环氧基复合材料中的应用,并展望了外援型自修复体系在聚合物基复合材料的应用前景及发展方向。     

Reliability analysis of shock-based deterioration using phase-type distributions

This paper presents a model to estimate the lifetime of degrading infrastructure systems subject to shocks based on the family of Phase-type (PH) distributions. In particular, the paper focuses on damage accumulation when both the inter-arrival time of shocks and their sizes are random. PH distributions are applied to approximate any probability distribution with positive support; furthermore, their matrix-geometric properties allow to handle problems involving the calculation of convolutions (e.g., sum of shock sizes). The proposed PH shock model relaxes the identically distributed assumption for the inter-arrival times and/or shock sizes. Besides, the model provides easy-to-evaluate expressions for important reliability quantities such as the density function and the moments of the lifetime, and the mean and moments of the cumulative shock deterioration at any time. In order to fit data or theoretical distributions to PH, the paper compares and discusses two PH fitting algorithms: the Moment Matching (MM) and the Expectation Maximization (EM) methods in terms of accuracy, computational efficiency and the available information of the random variables to fit. Then, it provides an algorithm for the reliability estimation of infrastructures along with a study of its accuracy and efficiency; the results show acceptable execution times for most practical applications. Finally, the use of PH to handle degradation is illustrated with several examples of engineering interest; i.e., deterioration due to crack growth, corrosion, aftershocks sequences, among others.     

Reliability modeling for consecutive k-out-of-n: F systems with local load-sharing components subject to dependent degradation and shock processes

Traditional k-out-of-n models assume that the components are independent, while recent research studies assume that the components are dependent caused by global load-sharing characteristic. In this paper, we investigate the consecutive k-out-of-n systems with dependent components by local load-sharing characteristic. The work load and shock load on failed components will be equally shared by adjacent components, so the components tend to fail consecutively. Consequently, the components degradation processes may be diverse, since their degradation rate (dependent on work load) and abrupt degradation (dependent on shock load) become unequal because of local load-sharing effect. Furthermore, the system failure will be path-dependent on the failure sequences of components, which results in that the same system states may have different system failure probabilities. This new dependence makes the system reliability model more complex. In this work, an analytical model that can be solved numerically is derived to compute the reliability with this complex dependence. The developed model is demonstrated by a cable-strut system in the suspension bridge. The results show that the reliability decreases significantly when the new dependence is considered.     

Preparation of Robust,Room-Temperature Self-Healable and Recyclable Polysiloxanes Based on Hierarchical Hard Domains

The contradiction between high mechanical strength and mild healing conditions has long existed in self-healing materials, which limits the application of self-healing materials. The preparation of robust materials with excellent healing performance under mild conditions can effectively reduce resource waste and environmental pollution. Herein, self-healing polysiloxane elastomer materials, APDMS-MDI-IPDI-Bs, based on microphase separation strategy are reported. Through the synergistic effect of the designed urea hydrogen bond and the nitrogen-coordinated boroxine structure, the materials can maintain high mechanical properties (maximum tensile strength up to 3.35 MPa, elongation at break up to 316%), while maintaining excellent self-healing and recyclable ability (24 h healing efficiency at room temperature can reach 94.77 ± 3.23%), and the performance can be repeated many times without decay. APDMS-MDI-IPDI-Bs also exhibit unique hydrophobicity, expanding the application scenarios of materials containing boroxine structure.     

Characterization of solvent-filled polyurethane/urea–formaldehyde core–shell composites

Encapsulation of liquid phases is a crucial step in many self-healing material systems where a healing agent has to be protected during processing and then released during a damage event. In this work, the mechanical properties of polyurethane (PU) reinforced urea–formaldehyde (UF) shells are characterized. It was found that shell thickness is both a function of PU content in the core phase and of the microcapsule diameter. Furthermore, a saturation thickness was found for high PU contents or high capsule diameters and this phenomenon had direct implications on the bursting force under compression of single microcapsules. With help of an analytical model, the Young's modulus of the hybrid PU/UF was determined and in general, PU-reinforced shells had a lower modulus but higher ductility in terms of elongation at break, leading to more resistant microcapsules overall.     

Reliability Model for Electronic Devices under Time Varying Voltage

Present reliability models, which estimate the lifetime of electronic devices, work under the assumption that the voltage level must be constant when an Accelerated Life Testing is performed. Nevertheless, in a real operational environment, electronic devices are subjected to electrical variations present in the power lines; that means the voltage has a time‐varying behavior, which breaks the assumption of reliability models. Thus, in this paper, a reliability model is presented, which describes the lifetime of electronic devices under time‐varying voltage via a parametric function. The model is based on the Cumulative Damage Model with random failure rate and the modified Inverse Power Law. In order to estimate the parameters of the proposed model, the maximum likelihood method was employed. A case study based on the time‐varying voltage induced by electrical harmonics when Alternate Current/Direct Current (AC/DC) transformer is connected to the power line is presented in this paper. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reliability and risk models based on independent trials

An analysis has been made of the mathematical relationship between two alternative models for reliability and risk estimation under the assumption of mutual independence. In cases where the reliability formulation is expressible as a compound union event, the resultant reliability expressions are analogous to the Bernoulli and Poisson trials processes. Nonparametric inequality relationships aredeveloped that demonstrate that a Bayesian-Bernoulli model always predicts event probabilities that are less than Bernoulli probabilities, which are always less than or equal to probabilities predicted by the finer grained Poisson trials model. An analysis of the maximum relative prediction error indicates when the individual probabilities are less than 0.1, the relative error between the Bernoulli and Poisson models is always less than 5 percent. The results are demonstrated to have utility in system reliability, engineered design lifetime risk analysis, and simulation applications in which the model is based on independent trials.     

Healing of low-velocity impact damage in vascularised composites

This research has sought to characterise damage formation and self-healing efficiency within vascularised carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates over a range of low velocity impact energies. Using ultrasonic C-scanning and compression after impact (CAI) analysis, vascularised laminates were shown to conform to the same damage size to residual compression strength relationship established for conventional laminates. The damage tolerance level of the host laminate was carefully determined, an important consideration in selection of the most appropriate vascule spacing for a reliable self-healing system. The healing functionality imparted full recovery of post impact compression strength over the range of impact energies tested (2.5–20 J), via healing of matrix cracking and delamination damage. The successful implementation of this technology could substantially enhance the integrity, reliability and robustness of composite structures, whilst offering benefits through reduced operational costs and extended lifetimes. However, establishing the benefits of such novel systems to existing design criteria is challenging, suggesting that bespoke design tools will be required to fully attain the potential benefits of self-healing technologies.     

Which battery model to use?

The use of mobile devices like cell phones, navigation systems or laptop computers is limited by the lifetime of the included batteries. This lifetime depends naturally on the rate at which energy is consumed; however, it also depends on the usage pattern of the battery. Continuous drawing of a high current results in an excessive drop of residual capacity. However, during intervals with no or very small currents, batteries do recover to a certain extent. The usage pattern of a device can be well modelled with stochastic workload models. However, one still needs a battery model to describe the effects of the power consumption on the state of the battery. Over the years many different types of battery models have been developed for different application areas. In this study we give a detailed analysis of two well-known analytical models, the kinetic battery model (KiBaM) and the so-called diffusion model. We show that the KiBaM is actually an approximation of the more complex diffusion model; this was not known previously. Furthermore, we tested the suitability of these models for performance evaluation purposes, and found that both models are well suited for doing battery lifetime predictions. However, one should not draw conclusions on what is the best usage pattern based on only a few workload traces.     

Time-based replacement policies for a fault tolerant system subject to degradation and two types of shocks

A single component nonrepairable system suffering from both an internal stochastic degradation process and external random shocks is investigated in this paper. More specifically, the Wiener process with a positive drift coefficient is introduced to describe the gradual deterioration and the arrival number of external shocks is counted with a nonhomogeneous Poisson process (NHPP). Meanwhile, fault tolerant design is incorporated into the stochastically deterioration system so as to protect it from shock failures to some extent and is consummately addressed via a generalized m − δ shock model. From the actual engineering point of view, external shocks are typically classified into two distinct categories in this current research, that is, a minor shock (Type I shock) increasing the damage load on current degradation level and a traumatic shock (Type II shock) resulting in system catastrophic failure immediately. The closed-form expression of system survival function is derived analytically and is viewed as the generalization of existing reliability function for systems subject to dependent and competing failure processes. Based on which, two time-based maintenance (TBM) policies including an age replacement model and a block replacement model are scheduled, where the expected long-run cost rate (ELRCR) in each model is, respectively, optimized to seek the optimal replacement interval. In the illustrative example part, a subsea blowout preventer (BOP) control system is arranged to validate the theoretical results numerically. To compare which policy is more profitable under different conditions, the relative gain on optimal maintenance cost rate of the two TBM policies is presented.     

Effect of mendable polymer stitch density on the toughening and healing of delamination cracks in carbon–epoxy laminates

This paper presents an investigation into the effect of stitch density on the delamination toughening and self-healing properties of carbon–epoxy laminates. The stitches provide the laminate with the synergistic combination of high mode I interlaminar fracture toughness to resist delamination cracking and healing properties to repair delamination damage. The results show that the fracture toughness of the laminate increased with stitch density, due to higher traction (crack closure) loads exerted by the stitches bridging the delamination. During the healing process these bridging stitches first melt and then flow into the delamination, leading to self-healing with full restoration of the mode I fracture toughness. Furthermore, the stitches were capable of repairing delamination cracks many times larger than the original size of the stitches. The effect of stitch density on the healing process of delamination cracks and restoration of fracture toughness was found to remain approximately the same under multiple repair operations.