Smart Materials

Construction and infrastructure materials are significant carbon emitters and a major cost in construction repair and maintenance projects. As a result they have taken centre stage in the industry’s endeavours to reduce cost and carbon.  

This has created significant challenges given the sector’s conservative nature and insufficient government expenditure and the need to continue to deliver reliability and safety.  

The smart materials programme within FUTUREROADS covered the three themes of decarbonisation, digitalisation and environmental protection. The projects included the exploration of low carbon cements, binders and concrete, investigating pavement solutions for enhanced road safety in extreme weather, enhancement of commercial pavement performance inspection approaches and the use of machine learning approaches for exploring the correlations between the parameters that impact pavement performance. The strong and direct collaboration with the industry partners was instrumental in shaping the direction of the research and ensuring its direct commercial relevance. 

 In Digital Roads Prosperity Partnership the Smart Materials team have worked in collaboration with the Automation and Robotics Research team to develop enhanced repair materials that can be used in conjunction with the Autonomous Maintenance Plant. Thorough laboratory testing has determined that the evidence base supports departures from current specifications toward the adoption of performance criteria that prioritise compatibility, toughness, and durability over peak strength alone.