10 week research stay at Cardiff University by dr. Tim Van Mullem

That’s a wrap! Last week I finished my 10 week research stay at the RESCOM group of Cardiff University. I am extremely grateful to Riccardo Maddalena for introducing me to the world of Shape Memory Polymers and to go above and beyond to make me feel at home in Wales. Thank you for encouraging me with your drive, your passion and your enthusiasm!

Shape Memory Polymers have the property that they contract upon heat activation. We used this property to trigger crack closure in mortar specimens. After crack closure, the ingress of harmful substances into the crack was investigated and this was compared to the performance of a reference mortar. I was fortunate enough that I could execute the testing in the brand new DURALAB, the first interdisciplinary durability testing facility in Wales. It was really exciting to work with their state-of-the-art microscope which auto-stitches images, allowing me to evaluate dozens of cracks in a short time span. In addition to dr. Maddalena, I would also like to thank all the researchers who welcomed me in the group: Ahmad Alhamdan, Ayman Almutlaqah, Ibrahim Degani, Shahram Sharifi, Nirthiha Fernando, Joseph Pugh, dr. Cristina De Nardi, dr. Deepankar Ashish, Ziang Zhao, Zebang Liu, Evan, and of course my SMARTINCS colleague Sina Sayadi, the technicians of the lab, and many more. Thank you for all the fun chats and interesting discussions! I look forward to seeing the progress on all the fascinating projects you are working on. I am also grateful to the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) who made this international mobility possible. - dr. Tim Van Mullem