Conflexpave: New Type Of Bendable Concrete

Scientists from the NTU-JTC Industrial Infrastructure Innovation Centre (I³C) of Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) have developed a new type of bendable concrete. It is also known as ConFlexPave. ConFlexPave claims more benefit as compared to regular concrete. It requires less maintenance and gives more durability. Scientists hope it relieves loads weight for drivers of the material to sites as well.

Professor, Chu Jian said, “We developed a new type of concrete that can greatly reduce the thickness and weight of precast pavement slabs, hence enable speedy plug-and-play installation, where new concrete slabs prepared off-site can easily replace worn out ones.”

This new bendable concrete makes streaming less labor-intensive through simple materials. It can be made into slim concrete asphalt plates. Scientists said these plates could reduce the time taken to develop roads.

Working Of This New Bendable Concrete:

Generally, traditional concrete uses gravel, sand, cement, and water. But this combination makes the mixture durable but not flexible. Thus, cracks under heavy pressure.

ConFlexPave is specially design to mix the particular types of hard materials with polymer microfibers. This combination makes the mixture more flexible and tough by increasing skid resistance.

Asst Prof Yang En-Hua said, “The key breakthrough was understanding how the components of the materials interact with one another mechanically on a microscopic level. With detailed understanding, we can then deliberately select ingredients and engineer the tailoring of components. So our final material can fulfil specific requirements needed for road and pavement applications. The hard materials give a non-slip surface texture. Microfibers in mixture which are thinner than the width of a human hair, distribute the load across the whole slab. Thus, it become tough as metal and at least twice as strong as conventional concrete under bending.”

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Mr. Koh Chwee, Director of Technical Services Division said, “the invention of this milestone technology is a great result of a collaboration.”

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