SHE: The Flemish program on engineerd self-healing materials

The vision of this program SHE is to develop new and combined smart self-healing concepts, fully resulting in durable and sustainable materials with an expanded lifetime of at least 50%. SHE focusses on three different material classes, which cover an important part of the Flemish industry: - Cementitious and mineral building elements are studied in the strategic basic research project (SBO) ‘SECEMIN’.� Within this project, a proof-of-concept for self-healing concrete with encapsulated polymeric / bacterial healing agents has already been obtained. - Polymers and composites are studied in� the� SBO� ‘SEPOCOM’.� A dual microcapsule approach with a new healing chemistry and novel encapsulation technologies has led to quite promising self-healing results for epoxy resins. - Coatings are investigated in� the� SBO� ‘NAPROM’. Within this project coating demonstrators are developed that combine self-healing polymers and new encapsulated inhibitors for corrosion protection of metals. To stimulate early valorization, industrial projects are linked to the SBO projects: - SHEcon (linked to SECEMIN), which aims at structural and architectural applications. The goal of this project is to engineer self-healing concrete to minimize the appearance of cracks in the outer cladding of concrete sandwich panels, in order to maintain the impermeability and mechanical response. - PUrePAIR (linked to SEPOCOM), which aims at the development of selfhealing polyurethane foams and elastomers. The self-healing capacity is obtained by adding especially designed capsules with a newly developed chemistry as healing agent. - SHREC (linked to NAPROM and SEPOCOM), which aims at the development of self-healing coatings that can heal micro- and macroscratches. A series of healing procedures to be tested for a range of commercial coating systems (thermal, UV, self-crosslinking) are being investigated. The consortium is well balanced to carry out the scientific and technological developments. Research groups of Ghent University, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, University of Antwerp and FLAMAC bring in their expertise. A strong industrial involvement (Recticel, Devan Chemicals, Willy Naessens Construct, Cytec, Bekaert and Arcelor Mittal) ensures the market orientation and exploitation of the results.