Materials Today: Proceedings 27 (2020) 158–162

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Materials Today: Proceedings

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matpr

Performance studies on rate of self healing in bio concrete

Chereddy Sonali Sri Durga ⇑, Nerella Ruben, Madduru Sri Rama Chand, Chava Venkatesh
Department of Civil Engineering, Vignan’s Foundation for Science, Technology & Research, Vadlamudi 522213, Andhra Pradesh, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Conventional concrete has a fault, that it is subjected to cracking during tension. The cracks that appear
Received 26 August 2019 on concrete surface permit the liquids to penetrate inside and cause decay of concrete structures. As ren-
Received in revised form 23 September ovation and restoration of concrete structures are time consuming, costly and a challenging issue, self
2019
healing concrete overcomes the issue by healing the cracks on the concrete surface. This concrete has
Accepted 26 September 2019
Available online 29 October 2019
eco-friendly in nature and seals the inner portion of cracks by releasing calcium carbonate. The main
objective of this paper is to indicate the rate of crack healing using biological agents to enhance the
impermeable nature of concrete. The mechanical and durability tests are conducted to compute the rate
Keywords:
Bio concrete
of self healing in concrete. The study reveals that bio concrete mixes after 28 days of curing attained an
Crack healing improvement in compressive strength of 22%, split tensile strength of 16% and flexural strength of 11%
Durability compared to conventional concrete. The dense nature of concrete has examined by ultrasonic pulse
Porous nature velocity values. Sorpitivity and water absorption tests assessed the durability properties of both conven-
Sorpitivity test tional and bacterial concrete samples, for which presence of bacteria enriched durability properties of
bacterial based concrete specimens.
Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the First International Con-
ference on Recent Advances in Materials and Manufacturing 2019.

1. Introduction is natural and pollution free [4]. The implementation of bio-

Concrete being the mainly utilized construction material, con-
tains ingredients of cement, fine aggregate, coarse aggregate and
water. It is computed that above 30 million tons of concrete is
being produced and consumed every year [1]. Cracks are formed
in concrete both in fresh state i.e. due to shrinkage effects of curing
and hardened state by the mechanical loading throughout the
lifespan of structures, the decay process starts affecting the service
life of concrete structures by corrosion of reinforcement and
freeze-thaw action [2]. The fundamental necessity of a hydraulic
structure is to avoid leakage for a long period of time. These struc-
tures are designed as thick sections by limiting the concrete stres-
ses to prevent cracks. For these thick sections also, cracks are
formed due to moisture and temperature movements. It is very
tough to prevent cracks in concrete structures; the water tightness
can be achieved by controlled cracking [3].
The application of mortar and epoxy gel can seal the crack but it
requires continuous maintenance. The usage of biological agents
for healing the cracks on concrete surface is desirable because it
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: chereddysony@gmail.com (C. Sonali Sri Durga).
concrete enhances the service life of concrete structures, reduces
repair and maintenance costs and thus leads to decrease of new
construction works which also reduces the utilization of raw
materials, savage in energy consumption. This finally results to
decelerate carbon dioxide emissions due to cement plant into
atmosphere [5].
The self-healing products formed by continuous hydration of
unhydrated cementitious materials are less and it seems to be very
difficult to self heal the total width of crack in concrete by autoge-
neous healing [6]. This mechanism has an ability to heal up to
150 mm only [7]. The usage of external agents like super absorbent
polymers, biological agents, high pozzolanic materials and chemi-
cal agents for sealing cracks is termed as autonomous healing [8].
The type of bacteria used in the concrete depends on the pH of
water as some bacteria can’t resist acidic nature and some types
of bacteria can’t survive on basic environment. The bacteria added
in concrete in the form of spores gets contact with water and
become active by precipitating calcium carbonate [9]. Many
authors worked on several types of bacteria around the globe
[10–22].
This paper assess the mechanical parameters viz: compressive
strength test, split tensile strength test and flexural strength test

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.09.151
2214-7853/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the First International Conference on Recent Advances in Materials and Manufacturing 2019.