Carbon-Doped Eco-Earth Concretes for Sustainable Monitoring of Structures

The construction sector has a great impact on the environment. The growing attention to more sustainable alternatives to traditional construction materials is stimulating the development of novel eco-friendly composites. This work presents the first investigations on novel concretes realized with earth and carbon fillers. In particular, electrical and mechanical tests have been carried out in order to evaluate the conductive and smart sensing properties of the novel composites. Cube samples doped with different amounts of carbon microfibers have been tested under compression, with the final aim of investigating the characteristics of the materials and identifying the most performant mixes. The tests demonstrated the good electrical and electromechanical properties of these new eco-earth concretes which appear promising to fabricate embedded sensors or structural smart elements in sustainable structures.