Plaster work

News

EU-funded project adapts micropolymer technology for self-sealing wall board as part of safety measures range for buildings in earthquake zones. Siobhan Wagner reports.

A hi-tech villa designed to resist earthquakes by self-healing cracks in its walls is being built on a Greek mountainside as part of a £9.5m

project that includes materials specialists from

.

(NMI) is playing a crucial role by developing plaster board walls that contain nanoscale polymer particles, which will liquefy when squeezed under pressure, flow into cracks and harden to form a solid material.

The team hopes this will help further the development of inexpensive earthquake-resistant structures for some of the world's most susceptible areas.

'The use of micropolymers has been around for quite a long time,' said NMI chief executive Prof Terry Wilkins. 'The concept of pressure-sensitive polymers is also quite well known in the polymer industry, but putting them in this much smaller form in these situations is unknown. It's completely novel.'

The most innovative and challenging part of the project for the researchers will be to model and design polymer nanoparticles that can be incorporated into the plaster matrix as the board is being made.

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