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Assessment of self-healing capabilities, a route towards standardization, International Conference on Self-Healing Materials
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Abstract
In the last decade, an increasing attention has been given to the development of repairing capabilities in materials, with an emphasis in specific strategies that can promote self-healing, with or without external triggers. Self-healing has opened several new possibilities, especially in applications where long-term reliability is demanded and either maintenance or replace of these materials is difficult to perform.
Depending on the material class, different approaches in order to achieve self-healing, can be adopted. This led to distinct evaluation methods of the self-healing efficiency, depending on the material and its final use. One of the new challenges in self-repairing materials lays in the establishment of a common testing procedure for different materials classes, such as ceramics, concrete, polymers and composites. Normalized procedures can conduct to a standardization of the healing evaluation, which will set a common ground towards a better understanding of the concept and its quantification.
The assessment of self-healing capabilities is one of the major goals in the SHeMat project. SHeMat is a Training Network for Self-Healing Materials funded within the scope of the Seventh Framework Programme by the European Commission's Marie Curie programme. The focus of this work will be the development of a standard procedure and its applicability to the specific materials developed within the project. The comparative analysis of the results will act as a support to establish a common base for the definition of self-healing as a quantifiable characteristic. This discussion covers the work that has been conducted so far in the SHeMat project and possible future directions