Innovation in construction materials
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I attended a presentation before Christmas from a company called concrete canvas.
“Concrete Canvas Ltd. manufacture a ground breaking material technology called Concrete Canvas that allows concrete to be used in a completely new way. Concrete Canvas was originally developed for the award winning Concrete Canvas Shelters, a building in a bag that requires only water and air for construction.
Concrete Canvas is a flexible concrete impregnated fabric that hardens on hydration to form a thin, durable water proof and fire-resistant concrete layer. Essentially, it’s concrete on a roll.
Concrete Canvas Shelters are rapidly deployable hardened shelters that require only water and air for construction. A CCS25 variant can be deployed by 2 people without any training in under an hour and is ready to use in only 24 hours. Essentially, CCS are inflatable concrete buildings.” (http://concretecanvas.com/).
I think they also featured on Dragons Den but didn’t get funding. I think it’s a great product. The shelters could perhaps be beneficial in longer term displaced persons camps owing to the fire resistance, although the market has been a lot less interested in these potentially (I assume) down to the increased cost, logistics and complexity compared to canvas/plastic alternatives.
On the other hand, the canvas rolls have sold very well worldwide, as it is a much cheaper alternative to reinforced concrete for non-structural applications, and is cost effective even when the cost of shipping to Australia is included (although this reduces the environmental credentials). Costain have used a lot of this stuff for lining ditches, stormwater channels and ponds, and bunds. The EA have used it for flood defences, and they also report the military have used it in Afghanistan (I think for improving Hesco and ditches).
The company has secured compliance certificates for fire resistance, age testing, abrasion resistance, chemical resistance, and impact resistance (for pipeline coatings). The use of the product in non-structural applications supports product development by allowing them to secure the accreditation above, provides funding and increases market awareness. But their ultimate aim is to push the product as a structural application. Due to the increased risk this poses, there are many more barriers, and more checks and balances required. It’s easy to get something into the non-structural market, essentially just prove that it won’t kill fish and newts. Proving that something won’t fail and kill lots of people is much harder. The future is also uncertain for manufacturers – will Brexit change the nature of BS EN accreditation, raising the bar or making investment in securing accreditation now irrelevant in the future? The Institutions say not – but who knows for sure?
Blog 3 – the third and potentially final blog in the Tony Strachan innovation series will look at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre and how innovation was achieved by Expedition (and others). This featured in the January 17 issue of The Structural Engineer in case anyone wants a spoiler of the article I will be shamelessly presenting.
Update: I checked the info that concrete canvas sent through ref the previous military uses for their product. The case studies are linked at the top (as it’s the only place wordpress will let me put it) for info – but don’t let them stifle your creativity! I’m not aware if they’re working on military projects currently.
Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog 
Tony, the Corps have definitely used these in the past (at least in training at Gib anyway).
I remember seeing one of these erected on the training area where all the HESCO was being tested. It worked and provided a shelter, although the two “untrained” men rule was a bit optimistic – it looked a bit bodged, but seemed to work.
I also think the Corps’ issue with them was storing such impregnated fabrics as they are a COSHH risk and if you get the rolls wet (moist) then you have something that is pretty much useless.
The product was in an early phase of development so I’m sure these issues are pretty simple to iron out. It would be interesting if this is still a capability the Corps is trying to develop or if they’ve chucked it on the “Good ideas” pile.
I’ll email Concrete Canvas to ask.
I’m not sure there’s much future in the shelters at the moment. They’re inferior to Hesco in terms of protection and the amount of cover you can put on top of them won’t stop anything much. The rolls of product might be useful though. I don’t think moving them is any harder than moving geotextile around, COSHH risk is less than cement (not respirable). As an alternative for some concrete applications, particularly as a liner, i tjink it could be quite good.
JM had a conversation with their ‘technical’ rep with a view to an evening ICE presentation however I seem to recall the discussion essentially demonstrated that they had a ‘good idea’ but no real technical base. Offers to try to help shape a presentation that would stand scrutiny technically were not taken up. I suspect there was a fear of sums rather than ‘just test it and see if it’s OK’. There is no doubt that there may be applications where this might be an optimum solution, however, as it stands, it is not something that can be demonstrated to have been designed deliberately rather than tried as a good idea that had fortuitously not failed yet. In many ways it is a solution looking for the right problem and it hasn’t found it yet.
Richard,
I agree with your comments.
It’s disappointing that they weren’t keen to do a presentation. When I spoke to their engineer they seemed very keen to explore all opportunities to get into the structural market. Perhaps this is a recent thing.
Your point about it being a solution looking for a problem is exactly why I mentioned it. Hopefully this is now out in the “creative database”. It is not just down to the manufacturer to push different ways to use this, it is also down to us as “creative individuals”. Eventually we will come across the right Client “creative audience” and something might happen.
As a Corps we need to be familiar with the process of using materials in new ways and how we control the risk of doing so, and we must be able to perform in areas where we can’t just order up 1 Nr. Non Equipment Bridging set. What level of risk are we comfortable with, how much should we test and how much are we willing to rely on calculations and predicted performance?
I know this “training hard” is something 21 (particularly 4 Sqn) were keen to do more of when I was leaving – not sure how far they got with it. I’m sure 170 must have done some of this when they were designing in the vernacular in Afghan?