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Sustainable, High Performance Infrastructure Materials Program
Summary:The standards used to classify and specify materials used in infrastructure, construction, manufacturing, and energy production are not able to ensure sustainable performance for the materials, because they are either not adequately based on a measurement science foundation, or are not performance-based, or else are incomplete and do not address essential materials issues. In the short-term, material sustainable performance or sustainability considers the energy content, the environmental impacts of the constituents and the manufacturing processes, while in the long-term, sustainability is more a function of service life and the environmental issues involved with material degradation and disposal. This research program incorporates three research thrusts: polymers, concrete, and sustainability metrics. The sustainability metrics thrust will inform the future direction of the polymers and concrete thrusts. The two material thrusts will develop measurement science composed of a combination of characterization, performance measurement, accelerated durability tests, and modeling to develop standards that will be used by industry and specified by end-users in these broad application areas to enable sustainable materials performance. Description:Program and Strategic Goal: Sustainable, High Performance Infrastructure Materials, part of the Sustainable and Energy-Efficient Manufacturing, Materials, and Infrastructure Strategic Goal. Objective: To develop and deploy advances in measurement science for sustainable materials used in manufacturing and construction, including cementitious, polymeric, and composite materials by 2016. What is the problem? The standards used to classify and specify materials used in infrastructure, construction, manufacturing, and energy production are not able to ensure sustainable performance for the materials, because they are either not adequately based on a measurement science foundation, or are not performance-based, or else are incomplete and do not address essential materials issues. In the short-term, sustainability considers the energy content and the environmental impacts of the constituents and the manufacturing process, while in the long-term, sustainability is more a function of service life, repair costs, and the environmental consequences of material degradation and disposal. Both aspects of sustainability are important components of quantitative sustainability assessments. The main material classes that are common to the industry sectors mentioned above are steel, concrete, and polymers. This program will focus on concrete and polymers. However, essentially all exposed steel is protected by a corrosion barrier, which is almost always a polymeric coating or concrete, so that this program's results will also have a direct effect on the sustainable use of steel. The figure below shows six sequential stages of the material sustainability cycle (MSC): raw materials, manufacturing, design and engineering, installation, end use, and waste management. Between each sequential pair, standards (and, in the case of structural applications, standards and codes) are needed to act as an effective and efficient communication tool between disparate commercial parties. Standards act like a Rosetta Stone ensuring that all parties understand and agree to generated information, the protocols used in generating data, the technical and scientific basis upon which generated data was based, as well as the accuracy and precision of generated data. The materials sustainability program has research elements that range from manufacturing to waste management. The standards that link across different elements are often the same – for example, concrete constituents and mixtures and polymeric products are manufactured to meet certain standards, which are the same standards used by designers and engineers, either independently or in codes. This means, for example, that some entities can be partners in the research that leads to new and improved sustainable material standards, and also end-users of the standards themselves. The context of the problem is large. The total costs of repairing/replacing the US infrastructure is estimated to exceed $2 trillion[1],[2], and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has recommended that "as infrastructure is built or rehabilitated, life cycle cost analysis should be performed for all infrastructure systems"[3], which necessitates sustainability assessment. The Administration has stated that building a world-class physical infrastructure is one of its top priorities for innovation[4],[5]. Subsets of the material aspect of this general problem, focusing on concrete and polymers, are addressed in this program. Plastic piping is expected to be used in increasing volumes in the future, as pipe leaks and breaks in municipal water/sewage systems have steadily increased in recent years.[6] The addition of nano-fillers to polymeric matrices greatly improves product performance, but has raised issues related to environmental, health and safety issues associated with release of these nanoparticles over time.[7] A technology gap in the long-term strategic plan for highways is an inability to ensure sustainable performance in the short and long terms[8], with the most frequently observed failure mode in the short-term sustainability of concrete being early-age cracking, estimated to cost the U.S. industry $500 M annually.[9] The development of renewable energy sources such as solar photovoltaics has been listed as an Administration priority by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB)[10]. The yearly global market in sealants and adhesives is approximately $40B, and having standards that accurately measure their durability is an outstanding problem in implementing net-zero energy building technologies [11]. The aging of electric cables in nuclear power plants is a national problem, affecting all of the existing fleet of 104 US nuclear reactors[12]. Why is it hard to solve? Commercial polymers and concrete are inherently complex, heterogeneous, multi-phase systems. Both are made from a variety of feedstocks, and in the case of concrete, often include industrial by-product materials such as fly ash and slag. Unexpected variations in performance mandate that careful material characterization must take place, complicated by the multi-phase nature of these materials. Specifying short term properties is hard since not all the required measurement techniques have been identified, developed or standardized, coupled with the fact that the properties of these materials are often time and environment-dependent. The degradation of these systems involves numerous component and environmental interactions and chemical, physical, and mechanical responses that operate over wide length and time scales. The measurement science for estimating the expected service life of a given material for any given end-use application is not very well-developed, yet service life is a sustainability metric important for the overall sustainability rating. How is it solved today, and by whom? The measurement science problems that need to be solved in order to have science-based, useful sustainability standards for materials used in infrastructure, construction, manufacturing, and energy production have not currently been solved. Industry practice documents like ACI-365.1R-00[13] and certain computer models like Life-365[14] are guides and tools for estimating service life based solely on over-simplified single-component attack mechanisms. More comprehensive service life computer models, such as STADIUM[15] in Canada, incorporate multi-species diffusion, reactions with ions in the groundwater, and moisture transport. In all cases, the initial condition is a properly placed, finished, and cured concrete element, which assumes adequate early-age performance[16]. The Concrete Sustainability Hub at MIT, co-funded by the Ready-Mixed Concrete Research and Education Foundation, and the Portland Cement Association, is the major US academic player in modeling concrete sustainability and program collaboration with the Hub has already begun. Standardsdo exist for some manufactured polymeric products, particularly those used in life-safety and military applications, for estimating service life. However, in the broad areas addressed by this program, reliance is placed on qualitative, long-term field exposure tests. The ability to generate repeatable and reproducible results has been a major weakness of this methodology. Sandia National Laboratories has an on-going program on thermo-oxidative degradation of polymeric materials, but has not addressed degradation due to ultraviolet radiation or moisture, as has been done at NIST in this program. Why NIST? Measurement science research that results in standards used to classify and specify materials used in infrastructure, construction, manufacturing, and energy production is closely aligned with the NIST Engineering Laboratory (EL) Strategic Goal of Sustainable and Energy-Efficient Manufacturing, Materials, and Infrastructure. This program supports EL's mission[17], follows EL's vision[18], and relies on one of the EL core competencies[19] of durability and service life prediction of materials. NIST/EL is internationally known for the assessment of performance, durability and service life prediction of construction materials, and has the instrumentation, computer hardware and software, and expert personnel to be able to carry out this program. Industrial stakeholders have recognized this as evidenced by their willingness to partner with the program in various consortia and road mapping activities. State and federal agencies partner with NIST/EL by direct involvement in road mapping exercises and consortia, and by using the program's unique measurement science and services capabilities to support their mission/agency goals. What is the new technical idea?The new technical idea is to couple advances in analytical instrumentation, controlled, multi-factor exposure in the laboratory, and computational materials science to measure and predict the performance of materials to enable critical and sustainable end-use applications in infrastructure, buildings, energy production, and manufacturing. This integrated approach will allow the measurement science to be developed that will provide the technical foundation for new science- and performance-based standards for these complex materials.Significant advances have occurred in recent years in these areas so that integrating these advances into a comprehensive program will enable these hard measurement science problems to be solved. Experimental advances that support the new technical idea include equipment that can now capture nanoparticles releases from polymer composites during degradation, X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy techniques that can extract information from amorphous materials like fly ash, and controlled multi-factor accelerated aging techniques. Computational modeling advances include numerical solution of concrete rheometers, thermodynamic-based computation of concrete microstructure and properties, numerical solution of transport through crack networks, and modeling of degradation processes in polymers and concrete. Why can we succeed now? Large volumes of polymeric and cementitious materials are consumed each year in infrastructure, construction, manufactured product applications, and energy production. The important role that these materials play in a nation's well-being is now receiving national and international attention. Material producers, designers, engineers, and owners increasingly desire to use more sustainable materials. In particular, engineers and designers regularly push the design limits of materials, which forces changes in existing standards and codes to enable their continuing sustainable use. Significant advances have occurred in recent years in analytical instrumentation, the ability to control exposure environments, and software and hardware for modeling material performance. NIST has, by far, one of the largest and most specialized collections of instruments in the world for characterizing material degradation. NIST has pioneered the modeling of material properties and degradation processes and has the expertise to couple modeling and experimental research to make it possible to solve the hard problems associated with the sustainable material performance. NIST has strong partnerships with the industrial and standards communities. NIST's participation, and in many cases leadership, in technical standards committees coupled with active end-user engagement via consortia and road mapping workshops ensures that its technical ability to meet measurement science needs will result in effective technology transfer to industry and society via revised and new standards. What is the research plan? The main technical thrusts of this program are focused on enabling critical and sustainable end-use applications in infrastructure, construction, energy production, and manufacturing via developing measurement science for measuring and predicting the performance of materials. Only if such measurements and predictions of materials performance, both short-term and long-term, are incorporated into standards will the goal of their use in manufacturing and specification by end-users be attained. Therefore, the research plan must encompass a broad spectrum of activities ranging from laboratory measurements and model computations through the standards adoption process. Ensuring that research results will support standards acceptance requires allocating resources for assessing uncertainties and documenting research results in open, scientific journal publications, which are both necessary to lay the technical foundation for standards. There are three major thrusts in this research plan, focusing on polymers, cement and concrete, and sustainability metrics. By focusing directly on the material of interest, the first two thrusts of this research plan enable broad impacts across economic sectors. The scope of the polymers thrust is limited to coatings, plastic pipes, sealants, and polymers used in photovoltaic applications. The coatings studied will be those used in construction (buildings and infrastructure) and/or in infrastructure-related manufactured products (e.g. coatings for airplanes and cars). The plastic pipes and sealants studied are those used in construction (buildings and infrastructure). The cement and concrete thrust will focus on material uses in construction (buildings and infrastructure). The third thrust, which will be jointly carried out between the polymers and concrete aspects of the program, will identify and prioritize common sustainability metrics for the two material classes being studied in this program. The resulting list will be used to direct future work plans that will help to ensure maximum programmatic impact. In both the polymers and concrete thrusts, characterization, performance measurement techniques, accelerated durability tests, and modeling will be used to achieve program goals. Characterization means measuring what the materials are made out of at the most relevant level. For example, for cement and fly ash, this means identifying the kind, quantity, and distribution of mineral components in the particles used. For plastic pipes, characterization means knowing the chemical phases and their mechanical state as a function of temperature and humidity. Measurement techniques mean quantitative measurements, including development of such measurements if needed, to assess viscoelastic mechanical parameters, shrinkage or expansion as a function of temperature or humidity, and surface damage under nanoindentation, among others. Accelerated durability tests can include carefully controlling temperature, humidity, solar exposure, mechanical load, or specimen geometry in order to make degradation mechanisms proceed faster and produce valid results in less time. Modeling is used, from the computational materials science-type models using high-powered computers to simple parameterized equations, to understand measurements, suggest new measurements, and transform performance measurements into performance predictions. The third thrust of the program, sustainability metrics, will consider the metrics used to characterize sustainability, which includes the energy content, the environmental performance of the constituents and the manufacturing process, and long-term sustainability, which considers service life and environmental issues associated with material degradation and disposal. Prioritizing these metrics, and identifying the measurement science and services gaps, will inform the polymer and concrete thrust projects and further guide and steer the development of appropriate measurement science research over the life of the program. Incorporating research results into standards that can be used by manufacturers and specified by end-users to achieve a level of sustainable performance is the final step in the research plan. What is supplied to the standards committees can be in several forms: (a) standard reference data or materials, on which a standard can be based, (b) new standard performance test methods that can be adopted, specified, and used, and (c) validation of the use and uncertainty estimation of a simpler tool by more sophisticated measurements carried out in the program. Over the next five years of the program, various areas will be worked on and standards will be produced, matching the standards development needs as expressed in the standards strategy section. Active participation of program personnel in standards committees is necessary for this development to be successful. In FY2012, in particular, the research plan will include characterization and controlled exposure work on polymeric materials used in pipes, photovoltaic modules, sealants, and nanocomposites. For concrete, the early age research will focus on fly ash characterization and concrete rheology, while the long-term research will concentrate on standardizing transport measurements and transport through crack networks. How will teamwork be ensured? The Sustainable, High Performance Infrastructure Materials program is made up primarily of members of EL's Polymeric and Inorganic Materials Groups, along with a NIST Fellow. There is a single principal investigator assigned for each of six projects who is accountable for the performance of the project. There is a team assigned to each project as well, who will interact regularly on project tasks. Each team member is the best qualified for the project(s) to which they are assigned. All the project leaders are accountable to the program manager, who will review the projects' progress once per quarter. What is the impact if successful? The "what is the problem" section demonstrated the magnitude of the materials problem faced by the US. The impact of standards that address key aspects of the problem will be measured by the amount of use of the standards in manufacturing, specifications, and codes. The technical areas being worked on have been jointly identified with industry and other end-users, hence the standards produced that meet identified needs will be adopted and used. Potential future impacts lie in new and improved standards for the assured early-age and long-term sustainable performance of concrete, a greater use of fly ash in concrete to increase sustainability, the environment, health, and safety issues of polymer nanocomposites, and the sustainable use of polymeric materials in photovoltaic systems, electrical cables, sealants, and pipes. Many specific stakeholders and end-users from the broad communities of infrastructure, construction, manufacturing, and energy production have expressed keen interest in the program via intellectual and/or financial collaboration with individual projects: electric power industry and utilities, construction and infrastructure materials specifiers, photovoltaic and electrical cable manufacturers and users/owners, coatings and plastics suppliers, automotive industry, aerospace industry, state Departments of Transportation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO), Gas Technology Institute (GTI), Adhesive and Sealant Council (ASC), and Plastic Pipes Institute (PPI). We have provided the links below on this site because it has information that may be of interest to our users. NIST does not necessarily endorse the views expressed or the facts presented on this site. Further, NIST does not endorse any commercial products that may be advertised or available on this site.[1] Report Card for America's Infrastructure, American Society of Civil Engineers, 2009. (www.asce.org) [2] Investment in Federal Facilities, National Research Council (2006). [3] ASCE 2009 Infrastructure Report Card (http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org) [4] A Strategy for American Innovation: Driving Towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs, http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/nec/StrategyforAmericanInnovation/ [5] OSTP/OMB Science and Technology Priorities for the FY 2012 Budget, 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/fy12-budget-guidance-memo.pdf [6] Sustainable water infrastructure, US Environmental Protection Agency,http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/sustain/index.cfm [7] Congressional Research Service, Nanotechnology and Environmental, Health, and Safety: Issues for Consideration, John F. Sargent Jr., January 20, 2011, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34614.pdf. [8] "Highways of the Future – A Strategic Plan for Highway Infrastructure Research and Development," FHWA-HRT- 08-068, Federal Highway Administration (July 2008) [9] ACI Strategic Development Council (http://www.concretesdc.org/projects/technologies.htm) [10] OSTP/OMB Science and Technology Priorities for the FY 2012 Budget, 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/fy12-budget-guidance-memo.pdf [11] ASTM and RILEM, Durability of Building and Construction Sealants and Adhesives, STP 1514 (2010). [12] Essential Elements of an Electric Cable Condition Monitoring Program US NRC NUREG/CR-7000 BNL-NUREG- 90318-2009 (http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/contract/cr7000/cr7000.pdf) [13] "Service Life Prediction – State-of-the-Art Report," ACI 365.1R-00, American Concrete Institute [15] http://www.simcotechnologies.com/ [16] "Measurement Science Roadmap for Workability of Cementitious Materials" held at NIST on March 18, 2011 – NIST Technical note under review [17] EL's mission is "To promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness in areas of critical national priority by anticipating and meeting the measurement science and standards needs for technology-intensive manufacturing, construction, and cyber-physical systems in ways that enhance economic prosperity and improve the quality of life." [18] EL's vision is "To be the source for creating critical solution-enabling measurement science, and critical technical contributions underpinning emerging standards, codes, and regulations that are used by the U.S. manufacturing, construction, and infrastructure industries to strengthen leadership in domestic and international markets." [19] EL core competencies: Intelligent sensing, control, processes, and automation for cyber-physical systems; Systems integration, engineering, and processes for cyber-physical systems; Energy efficient and intelligent operation of buildings with healthy indoor environments; Sustainability, durability and service life prediction of building and infrastructure materials; Fire protection and fire dynamics within buildings and communities; Resilience and reliability of structures under multi-hazards.
Major Accomplishments:Program Outcomes:
Recognition of EL: There have been many articles in industry trade journals such as Concrete Producer, Constructor, Stone Sand and Gravel Review, Legacy, Adhesives Age, and Journal of Coating Technology, covering program research. In addition, articles about program research have appeared in R&D Magazine, Engineering News Record, Concrete International, MIT Technology Review, the New York Times, and the Baltimore Sun. Awards that have been given to program personnel since 2006:
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 Start Date:October 1, 2011Lead Organizational Unit:elFacilities/Tools Used:Staff:Program Manager: Edward Garboczi Related Programs and Projects:Sustainable, High Performance Infrastructure Materials Program Early-Age Performance of Concrete Long Term Performance of Concrete Long-term Performance of Polymeric Materials in Energy Applications Mechanical Performance and Service Life of Structural Polymers: Pipes and Sealants Surface Damage and Nanofiller Release in Polymer Nanocomposites Sustainability Metrics for High Performance Infrastructure Materials Contact
General Information: Program Manager: Edward Garboczi 100 Bureau Drive, M/S 8615 |