Reader Response Draft 2 (Self-Healing Concrete)
In the article, “The Self-Healing Concrete That Can Fix Its Own Cracks,” Spinks (2015) stated that Hendrik Jonkers created self-healing concrete innovation to “decrease the amount of new concrete produced, lower maintenance and repair costs for city officials, building owners and home-owners” by inlaying self-activating limestone-producing bacteria into the concrete. The self-healing concrete has a longevity of up to 200 years and helps to reduce carbon emitters. However, the concrete can only repair up to 0.8mm wide of cracks and cost €30 per metre cube more than normal concrete. According to Alker, who is director of policy at the UK Green Building Council believes that it will be hard to convince the industry to adopt the new innovation. It will take unconventional consumers and developers who are willing to test their building with the new concrete to demonstrate positive results before others will support. Jonker has also been experimenting across the world where he claims that the people realized the profit because they can save from maintenance cost.
The article discussed about the possibility of the self-healing concrete winning over the construction industry. However, it did not provide sufficient information to convince the industry to adopt the innovation.
Firstly, in the article of “A Review On Self-healing In Reinforced Concrete Structures In View of Serving Conditions” by Haoliang Huang in Year 2014. His report provides much more information such as conditions that are required for different kinds of mechanisms for self healing. He explains the two methods in detail for both encapsulation and vascular systems techniques. He even concludes with reinforced concrete structure by serving conditions and potentially applied self-healing mechanisms. It is true that readers can understand better about self-healing concrete but he does not talk about the possibility of it winning over the construction industry.
Secondly, in the journal of “Industrial application of biological self-healing concrete: Challenges and economical feasibility” by Filipe Bravo Silvia in 2015, January. Filipe provides complete information in comparison of normal concrete and self-healing concrete. He points out the problem of normal concrete and also the path of self-concrete that is undergo. He mentions that self-concrete is under study since 1970 but only attracts attention from 2001 by the article White et al. There are two key points that he highlights the contractors are not responsible for warranty after 10 years in the industry scale whereas applied concrete should have at least of 50 years of service life. He also highlights there are structures need immediate repair once cracks appear, self-healing concrete would be the better choice as it provides guaranties for instant small cracks repair, he gives example such as underground museum to support his statement. Overall, his journal provides better understanding of self-healing concrete. However, from the two tables in comparing the cost of the two concrete, he concludes that it is too expensive for the industry to accept it with a price above €15 to €20 per m3 than the normal market. Which means it is not practical for the self-healing concrete to win over the construction industry any soon.
Thirdly, in the article of “A Review On Bacteria - Based Self-Healing Concrete” S.Dinesh, R.Shanmugapriyan & S.T.Namitha Sheen in 2016, December. Basically, it only provides the study of the application of bacteria in self-healing concrete even though list out the advantages and disadvantages of it. However, it does not talk about the possibility of it winning over the construction industry neither to convince the industry to adopt with the innovation.
Therefore to conclude, despite the short-comings and high cost of self-healing concrete. The construction industry has no confident to implement it as it is under experimenting or investigation stage. With the fact that it is not commonly been used in the industry and it is hard for them to take risk and wait for long term gain from maintenance cost. In other words, self-healing concrete is still a long way to win over the construction industry as it is yet to convince the industry to adopt with the innovation.
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Thank you for the good effort, Yunhuang. You have a clear, concise, and appropriate summary. You also present a well focused thesis. One issue though is that your supporting body paragraphs don't all have effective topic sentences: You often start with what could be considered supporting info for a topic sentence that doesn't exist. Let's talk about this.
ReplyDeleteAnother issue is a problematic citation convention: According to Alker, who is director of policy at the UK Green Building Council believes that it will be....
Let's talk.