About TRAASH

TraaSH is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship project hosted at Ulster University, United Kingdom. The project is dedicated to advancing next-generation cementitious materials that possess autonomous crack-healing capabilities while maintaining performance under elevated temperature and fire exposure conditions.

Despite concrete's widespread use and structural advantages, it remains inherently vulnerable to cracking, durability degradation, and thermal damage. Microcracks not only compromise mechanical integrity but also accelerate deterioration processes such as moisture ingress, chemical attack, and reinforcement corrosion. When subjected to fire or high temperatures, these vulnerabilities intensify, leading to microstructural instability, strength reduction, and long-term serviceability concerns.

While self-healing concrete technologies have demonstrated promising performance under ambient conditions, limited research has explored their effectiveness following thermal exposure. TraaSH addresses this critical knowledge gap by systematically investigating how healing mechanisms interact with thermally induced damage and by advancing the scientific understanding of durability recovery in smart cementitious systems.

Project Background

The Challange