The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, is attempting to develop a self-healing concrete for military installations.

Under the bio-inspired restoration of old concrete edifices (BRACE) program, DARPA is seeking to restore aging concrete structures such as runways through a combination of biology and concrete.

Brace

To accomplish this, BRACE is using biological organisms to incorporate a vascular system within the concrete that is capable of internally preventing cracks, thus halting their spread to the surface and causing structural failure.

According to DARPA, this enables the concrete to heal itself. Likewise, this approach could also be used to diagnose concrete deterioration.

“The central hypothesis of BRACE is that concrete can be infused with self-repair capabilities typically found in living organisms, drawing inspiration from vascular systems found in humans and vast networks of filamentous fungi that can span acres of land similar in scale to concrete buildings,” DARPA explained in a recent press release. “Such systems could provide a network of transportation for healing within the depths of the material to repair cracks before they reach the surface and cause failure.”

The DARPA team is working alongside researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder, U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Battelle Memorial Institute to develop the self-healing concrete.

In addition to runways, the self-healing concrete is also expected to be incorporated into other old and deteriorating military structures such as barracks and supply depots, for instance.

DARPA suggests that in addition to reducing maintenance costs, self-repairing structures — specifically, a self-repairing runway — could heal themselves amid conflicts.