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Revolutionizing infrastructure: The evolving landscape of electricity-based multifunctional concrete from concept to practice

Yes / Traditional concrete, primarily employed for structural purposes, ensures the safety and reliability of infrastructure due to its excellent mechanical and durability properties. However, with the increasing scale of infrastructure, coupling of multifactorial and harsh service environment, expanding usage spaces, escalating demands for construction-environment harmony, and ever-rising human habitat standards, traditional concrete proves inadequate in meeting the sustainable requirements during construction and service phases, thus prompting its development towards multifunctionality. Electricity, the invisible force that propels modern civilization, has given rise to the emergence of electricity-based multifunctional concrete when combined with tangible concrete that carries human civilization. Through the structure–function integration and function-intelligence integration, this innovative composite material demonstrates excellent intrinsic properties as a structural material, including mechanical performances and durability, and superior electrical properties, such as conductivity, inductance, capacitance, impedance, thermoelectricity, piezoelectricity, among others. It, therefore, holds significant promise across various engineering applications, such as structural health monitoring, traffic detection, energy conversion/storage, de-icing and snow melting, building heating, electromagnetic protection, cathodic protection, grounding, and electrostatic protection. The ongoing research on electricity-based multifunctional concrete establishes a fundamental material framework for the transformation of infrastructure, offering a method to enhance safety, durability, functionality, and resilience of infrastructure. This review summarizes the relevant research progress on electricity-based multifunctional concrete, focusing on its design, composition, underlying principles, properties, and applications in infrastructures. Current technical challenges and future perspectives toward applying electricity-based multifunctional concrete in infrastructures are also discussed. / National Science Foundation of China (51978127, 52178188, and 51908103), the Provincial-Municipal Joint Fund (Youth Fund) of Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2023A1515110437), and the Major Science and Technology Research Project of the China Building Materials Federation (2023JBGS10-02). / The full-text of this article will be released for public view at the end of the publisher embargo on 17 Nov 2025.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/19934
Date26 July 2024
CreatorsQin, H., Ding, S., Ashour, Ashraf, Zheng, Q.
Source SetsBradford Scholars
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle, Accepted manuscript
Rights© 2024 Elsevier. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), CC-BY-NC-ND

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