ArticleText 59489 1 10 20220520
ArticleText 59489 1 10 20220520
ArticleText 59489 1 10 20220520
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Highlights:
Use of Bacillus cibi was successful in producing a self-healing concrete.
Encapsulation of Bacillus cibi with lightweight aggregates had the largest crack
healing after 35 days.
Addition of Bacillus cibi improved the compressive strength of the concrete.
Using Bacillus cibi with no encapsulation showed the highest water permeability
recovery.
1 Introduction
Concrete is the most widely used manufactured construction material in the world
[1-5]. Despite its popularity, concrete has one major flaw: it has low tensile
strength, which makes formation of cracks inevitable due to the action of different
loads. Cracks can greatly diminish concrete strength and decrease its service life;
thus, different methods are being employed to control crack propagation in
Received May 31st, 2021, Accepted for publication November 18th, 2021.
Copyright ©2022 Published by ITB Institute for Research and Community Services, ISSN: 2337-5779,
DOI: 10.5614/j.eng.technol.sci.2022.54.3.5
Christian R. Orozco & Ivan Jan A. Urbino
concrete. However, most of the methods used are chemical-based, such as the use
of epoxy, acrylic resins, and silicone-based polymers. These materials are
generally not compatible with concrete, expensive, and mostly hazardous to the
environment [1]. In addition, Khushnood, et al. [3] indicate that most of these
methods are applied on the surface and are applicable to macrocracks only, and
Vijay, et al. [6] note that conventional methods do not commonly address cracks
with size less than 0.8 mm. Furthermore, repair of cracks is a costly operation.
Therefore, there is a need to find a sustainable way of healing cracks that
eliminates the need of manual intervention and involves less costs [7].
Some direct benefits of concrete self-healing include the reduction of the rate of
deterioration, extension of service life, and reduction of repair frequency and cost
over the life cycle of concrete infrastructure. Li and Herbert [8] emphasize that
the use of self-healing concrete also leads to enhanced environmental
sustainability in concrete since fewer repairs indicate a lower rate of material
2
Self-Healing of Cracks in Concrete using Bacillus cibi with Different
Encapsulation Techniques
This proposed research fills in existing gaps and limitations of published studies,
particularly in determining the effect of the self-healing material on the durability
of the concrete. This study investigated the viability of using a novel bacterium,
Bacillus cibi.
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Christian R. Orozco & Ivan Jan A. Urbino
Table 1 Test cases, encapsulation, and mix proportion used for bio-concrete.
Coarse Fine Bacterial
Water Cement Encapsulation
Test Case Aggregates Aggregates Solution
(kg) (kg) (g)
(kg) (kg) (mL)
NC 18.238 15.903 5.965 13.292 - -
BNO 18.238 15.903 5.965 13.292 100 -
DE 18.238 15.903 5.965 13.292 100 60
LWA 18.238 15.903 5.965 13.292 100 500
4
Self-Healing of Cracks in Concrete using Bacillus cibi with Different
Encapsulation Techniques
5
Christian R. Orozco & Ivan Jan A. Urbino
Using ANOVA one-way analysis with 95% confidence showed that the average
compressive strengths had a statistically significant difference. Using bacteria in
concrete (BNO) showed a 4.58% increase in the 28-day compressive strength
compared to NC. This is due to the additional calcium carbonate produced by the
bacteria when it was in contact with water during the mixing process. Meanwhile,
the average compressive strengths recorded for DE and LWA were close to the
results of NC, since the encapsulation served as a protective barrier for bacteria,
which means there was no bacteria-to-water contact during the mixing process
and therefore no additional calcium carbonate was produced.
LWA had the highest compressive strength recovery of 65.91%, while DE came
second with a high strength recovery of 63.93%. The recovery of normal concrete
can be attributed to the hydration of cement particles due to the incomplete
hydration process in the early stage and swelling of the cement matrix. These
results confirm the study by Muhammad, et al. [14], where it was established that
the compressive strength can be regained up to 60% after self-healing.
6
Self-Healing of Cracks in Concrete using Bacillus cibi with Different
Encapsulation Techniques
The results are similar to the study of Chen, et al. [15], where the hydraulic
conductivity was also in the range of 10-5 m/s. BNO showed a high water
permeability recovery of 85.04%. The small recovery of LWA and DE is
attributed to the small difference in hydraulic conductivity before and after
cracking, which made the permeability harder to recover. Since the water
permeability is directly proportional to the amount and size of the cracks, not to
mention that those cracks need to let bacteria or their encapsulation pass through
for healing to occur, a small difference in hydraulic conductivity entails that there
are only few cracks present on the top of the sample. Hence, there is a smaller
chance for water to pass through the diatomaceous earth powder or lightweight
aggregate. There was also a sample in DE that had large cracks such that when
water passed through it, it made the cracks larger. This is why BNO had a
significantly higher recovery than the other bio-concrete. Bacteria are present
throughout the whole cylinder and therefore it is very likely that bacteria are
present in the cracks. Another reason is that the BNO samples had a larger
difference of hydraulic conductivity before and after cracking, which means that
numerous cracks were developed. This observation also explains why NC
showed little recovery. Even though the difference in hydraulic conductivity
before and after cracking was large, it had recovered only a small percentage of
its hydraulic conductivity after 35 days.
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Christian R. Orozco & Ivan Jan A. Urbino
The trend of healing was similar for all cases where healing was observed to have
started at day 21. The unpredictability of the self-healing is apparent since BNO
and LWA had a slow improvement in crack healing, while DE had cracks
suddenly filled at day 28. The location of the cracks healed was also random,
which is why in LWA, unmarked cracks were observed to start healing at day 14.
The cracks filled in these test cases measured around 0.500, with LWA having
the largest crack width filled at 0.541 mm, while the largest crack widths healed
by BNO and DE were 0.500mm and 0.527mm, respectively. These crack widths
having healed confirms the studies made by previous researchers that were also
able to obtain crack healing at around 0.500 mm, as can be seen in Figure 3.
Figure 3 Crack images for (a) BNO, (b) DE, and (c) LWA.
8
Self-Healing of Cracks in Concrete using Bacillus cibi with Different
Encapsulation Techniques
Precipitation was also observable on the concrete surface of the BNO sample, as
shown in Figure 4, where the precipitate had a yellowish color, with excess
precipitate coming out of the cracks.
Figure 4 Bacteria precipitation in cracks for (a) BNO, (b) DE, and (c) LWA.
The chemical composition of the concrete for the different test cases is shown in
Table 3. The overall composition of the concrete may not have changed but there
were small changes in its chemical properties, such as the major components of
cement, which are alite and belite. The increase in these components when using
encapsulations shows that using lightweight aggregates and diatomaceous earth
had higher early strengths but low hydration rates. The increase in limestone
content of the bio-concrete with or without encapsulation meant that it may have
had high early age strength, the rate and capacity of bleeding decreased
considerably, and it was less susceptible to a lack of curing [17]. The change in
the amount of cementitious compounds such as pozzolan and fly ash also has an
effect on the properties of fresh concrete, such as an increase of workability,
lower heat of hydration and retard setting time when fly ash increases. However,
it may have low early age strength and reduced resistance to deicer salt scaling
and carbonation of concrete [18] compared to LWA.
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Christian R. Orozco & Ivan Jan A. Urbino
4 Conclusion
This is the first study to utilize Bacillus cibi for self-healing of cracks in concrete.
Based on the results achieved during this study, the use of Bacillus cibi was
successful in producing a self-healing concrete. Additionally, using lightweight
aggregates as an encapsulation technique showed the highest compressive
strength recovery at 65.91% and the largest healed crack width at 0.541 mm.
Using bacteria with no encapsulation showed the highest water permeability
recovery at 85.04% and that adding bacteria to the concrete improved the 28-day
compressive strength of the concrete and did not lead to any major changes in the
composition of the concrete.
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Self-Healing of Cracks in Concrete using Bacillus cibi with Different
Encapsulation Techniques
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