Element 7: New Materials, Methods, Products & Equipment

Tactical Plan

Scope

Provide an industry-focused Clearing House for New Materials, Methods, Products and Equipment through which industry members can identify their needs for new materials, methods, products and equipment to coordinate or provide a link between the needs and the researchers in the relevant fields. Also, identify and manage the content to go into one or more of the shared or common knowledge bases. For example, identify common industry-adopted methods or practices as well as materials and equipment information.

Founding Team

Pennsylvania State University, Vincent Allen
S&B Engineers and Constructors, Art Washburn
Saudi Aramco, Louis Archuleta
VTT, Arto Kiviniemi

Vision

The Vision statement describes what is wanted in the future.

New materials, methods, and equipment will enable rapid, low-cost construction of modularized, lightweight structures in a fraction of current time spans by applying highly engineered fabrication and assembly methods. Flexible and "programmable" properties will enable new generations of stronger, lighter materials to be easily transported, placed, formed, cured, and attached with little or no temporary support. New and improved processes engineered for efficiency will radically reduce labor and material costs. Self-assembling robotically controlled, and automatically activating components will replace the most troublesome of today's processes.

Current Problem

The Current Problem statement describes the existing situation.

There has been little change over the past few decades in basic materials and methods used in capital construction. The industry remains dominated by concrete, steel, and the methods required to place and assemble them. Advances in construction equipment and in secondary systems such as windows, interior surfaces, exterior finished surfaces, and roofing have led to better safety, energy efficiency, lower environmental impact, reduced maintenance, and improved durability. However, the basic methods of constructing primary structures have changed little since the advent of electricity.

A highly fragmented and inherently small-company industrial base inhibits advances and leadership for research into alternate materials, production, and delivery methods. There is little in the way of coordination between industry members to guide or provide direction to the research activities in new and improved materials and methods. Innovative ways to apply technologies such as lightweight, prefabricated aerated concrete structures and steel-free concrete decking systems are expanding the use of traditional materials, but are not making significant inroads as standard practices. There is little incentive for innovation, testing, and certification of new materials and processes by individual companies.

Potential Benefits & Opportunities

Reduce traditional build times to a fraction of today's norms
Reduce the direct labor required to manufacture and assemble
Eliminate a significant amount of non-value-added indirect labor content
Greatly extend the life of constructed facilities as well as their immunity to accidents, natural disasters, and hostile acts.

There is a significant opportunity to reduce the time and cost of constructing facilities and structures by compressing time, reducing labor content, and reducing the cost and amount of materials. New, lightweight, high-strength materials and components that are fabricated, assembled, and applied by intelligent automated construction systems will radically reduce these primary elements of cost. These new resources will also greatly extend the life span, performance, and flexibility of both facilities and structures including resiliency to accidents and catastrophic events. Flexible and "programmable" properties will enable materials to be easily transported, placed, formed, and attached with little or no cure times or temporary support structures. Improved strength-to-weight ratios, thermal properties, and other properties will enable the design and construction of facilities that radically extend the envelope of what is possible to build. These improvements will greatly expand capacity, performance architectural creativity, and functionality for all types of facilities.

The lifespan, performance, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of future capital facilities will be greatly enhanced by new and improved materials of construction that are fabricated and applied by intelligent construction systems to enable rapid, high-quality erection. Ultra-lightweight, high-modulus materials that do not require temporary systems for placement will reduce construction time and cost. Materials that provide high performance using only thin layers, have rapid cure and immediate functionality, and are self-configuring will drastically reduce the time and cost of construction.

Innovative assembly and joining methods applied by new generations of automated, smart tools and equipment will speed all aspects of the fabrication and build process. Modularity, at the largest and smallest elements of a structure, will enable rapid build as well as affordable reconfigurability to maximize lifecycle utility. Coupled with improved building techniques, improved materials will enable construction of capital structures that are highly resilient in failure mode and are effectively hardened against deliberate acts of destruction as well as accidents and natural disasters.

There is significant opportunity for new materials, joining technologies, and automated processes to reduce traditional build times to a fraction of today's norms, reduce the direct labor content required to manufacture and assemble, and eliminate a significant amount of non-value-added indirect labor content.

The benefits from better materials and methods are pervasive. New materials will open the door for new building methods that eliminate many labor-intensive and hazardous tasks. Drastic reduction of cure times and temporary structures will shorten build times and enable far more concurrent operations. New methods will enable the production of attractive, functional structures at greatly reduced cost. Specific benefits to the stakeholders are cited in the table below.

Stakeholder	Specific Benefit
Owner/Operators	Better facilities at lower cost.
Architects	Specification and utilization of new materials and processes enables innovation in facility design.
Designers/Engineers	An expanded array of better options.
Constructors	More efficient processes. Elimination of the time and cost of temporary fixtures, wait times, etc.
Material/Equipment/Technology Suppliers	New opportunities to develop products and services - especially for global markets.

It would be an advantage for the industry to have a way to influence the research direction. For the materials and methods researchers the advantage is to have their work field-tested and perhaps to speed up the process for the research outcome to become a commercial application.

Potential Barriers & Challenges

A highly fragmented and inherently small-company industrial base inhibits advances and leadership for research into alternate materials, production, and delivery methods.

Goals

The Goal statement describes what is expected to be achieved.

The goal for new materials and methods is to enable rapid, low-cost construction of modularized, light-weight structures in a fraction of current time spans. This will be accomplished by applying automated equipment and highly engineered assembly methods with zero waste and zero rework. Advances in protectants and coatings will extend the life of many material systems. New high-performance material systems will be rapidly inserted into use and application via expedited testing, certification, and approval processes.

The goal of this Roadmap Element is to enable the improvements outlined above to occur, despite the fragmentation of the industry, by fulfilling a much-needed coordination role.

Strategy for Achieving the Goal

The strategy statement describes how we see the goal being achieved.

The new material or new method needs of the industry members will be registered in some way and coordinated to identify similar business needs or required material properties. That register of needs will be made available to research institutes, universities, and other research organizations. The research organizations will register their field of expertise or interest so that industry members can identify likely resources to conduct specific research projects. The result is to coordinate, or provide a link between, the needs of the industry and the researchers in the relevant fields.

The development and deployment of new materials, manufacturing methods, and products for the construction industry will continue to be based on economic justification combined with performance improvements over the life of a facility or structure. Costs in all forms will be considered when assessing the need for, and development of, a new material or process. The economics of a new process will be compared to current practice, and cost and time advantage will be quantified to build a sound business case for pursuing specific technologies. The coordination role played by this Roadmap Element will contribute to improved economics by providing a faster link between appropriate researchers and industry members.

A broad base of materials needs has been identified, including:

More comprehensive testing over the product lifecycle to better understand long-term failure and degradation modes
Incentives for development, piloting, and introduction of new and enhanced materials
Increased interaction with other industry sectors (e.g., aerospace and manufacturing) to leverage commonalties and innovations
Strategies for disaster recovery and mitigating the impact of widespread product failures with disastrous impact, including financial, health, and safety aspects
Liability reforms based on better product knowledge and improved testing methods
Emphasis on new materials and methods to reduce costs.

Failure modes and similar issues pertinent to Homeland Security also will be addressed.

The results of this strategy will provide the basis for industry collaboration to secure funded research programs to develop new materials and methods capabilities.

Focus Areas & Projects

The focus area section describes what we are going to focus on, and specific projects are proposed within each focus area. Focus Areas are the broad description of what this Roadmap element is going to do. Each focus area will be addressed through several projects, conducted over time. The project titles are linked to the detailed project descriptions.

Project details can be viewed by downloading the PDF. The project template applied to each project includes: Project Title, Objectives / Deliverables (what result), Purpose / Business Driver(s) (why), Ties / Dependencies / Overlaps (with other projects or Elements) (constraints, boundaries), Urgency / Time line (when), Process / Activities (how), and Resources (who). Each project will be more fully defined as time progresses. At this point the project descriptions should indicate what the project will do in sufficient detail to get potential participants interested and to understand the timing and dependencies between projects. Timing or scheduling of these projects is presented in the section, the Seven-year Timeline.

E7-FA1: Establish and Maintain the New Materials and Methods Coordination Role - Define the needs for a coordinating role for new materials and methods from the perspective of both the facilities and construction industry members and the research community. Establish the coordinating role, based on the identified needs. Maintain the coordinating role, updating it as needed when new needs are identified.

Projects:

E7-FA1-P1 Define the New Materials and Methods Coordination Role
E7-FA1-P2 Set Up the New Materials and Methods Coordination Role
E7-FA1-P3 Establish the Mechanisms to Maintain the New Materials and Methods Coordination Role

E7-FA2: Establish and Maintain a Knowledge Base of New Materials and Methods - Identify the needs for a knowledge base of new materials and methods. Establish a knowledge base to meet the needs (utilizing services and technology from Roadmap Element 9), and maintain the content of that knowledge base over time. Promote the use of the knowledge base throughout the industry.

Projects:

E7-FA2-P1 Establish a New Materials and Methods Knowledge Base
E7-FA2-P2 Establish the Mechanisms to Maintain a New Materials and Methods Knowledge Base
E7-FA2-P3 Establish the Mechanisms to Promote the Use of the Services Provided

Seven-year Timeline

A timeline is proposed for the projects within this tactical plan.

Assumptions:

Preparation for each project will take about 3 months (1 quarter). Preparation includes identifying funding, resourcing and project set-up.
3-6 months is the typical time-frame for the actual work on each project.
The "X" is placed in the year of the most intensive work, although there may be opportunities to start some phases earlier or to run some projects in parallel for a while.

		Yr 1	Yr 2	Yr 3	Yr 4	Y4 5	Yr 6	Yr 7
E7-FA1: Establish and maintain the new materials and methods coordination role
E7-FA1-P1	Define the new materials and methods coordination role	X
E7-FA1-P2	Set up the new materials and methods coordination role		X
E7-FA1-P3	Establish the mechanisms to maintain the new materials and methods coordination role			X
E7-FA2: Establish and maintain a knowledge base of new materials and methods
E7-FA2-P1	Establish a new materials and methods knowledge base	X
E7-FA2-P2	Establish the mechanisms to maintain a new materials and methods knowledge base		X
E7-FA2-P3	Establish the mechanisms to promote the use of the services provided		X

Examples of Potential New Materials and Methods

The following ten items are examples of the new materials and methods that might be developed in future, and whose development could be accelerated by the proposed coordination role and knowledge base.

1. Improved Materials Engineering

Develop affordable, smart materials and components that support the vision of rapid-erecting and self-erecting facilities; reduce the cost to manufacture and fabricate materials and components; and reduce the cost to place, join, and install them with high labor productivity, zero waste, and zero rework.

New Engineering Standards - Develop comprehensive standards for the basic building elements required for rapid-erection approaches. Develop material, component, and system standards for accurate and unambiguous description and specifications for effective communication of needs between engineering, procurement, and site management.
Material Utilization Simulation Models - Develop simulation tools for predictive material placement and utilization strategies and for evaluating alternate design scenarios during the project engineering phase.
Improved Testing Methods and Approvals - Refine testing methods and approval processes to accelerate the development of new materials and components and provide materials databases to support the implementation of model-based design. Develop 1) improved failure modes, effects, and criticality analysis tools, accelerated testing methods for end-of-life failure mechanisms, and predictive models for lifecycle maintenance and repair; 2) uniform specification methods and standards for common industry databases and models; and 3) testing methods for coatings and protective layer systems for corrosion, thermal, and other environmental effects.
Assured Readiness and Quality of Materials - Develop systems that provide automatic verification of construction materials and work against defined quality standards, including the ability to identify any variations, including those that are within defined tolerances.

2. Enhanced Materials and Components

Develop and deploy new, affordable, smart materials and components that support the vision of rapid-erecting and self-erecting facilities; support needs for disaster resistance and graceful degradation under catastrophic stress; reduce the cost to manufacture and fabricate materials and components; and reduce the cost to place, join, and install them with high labor productivity, zero waste, and zero rework.

Materials For Extended-life, Disaster-resistant, Low-Cost, Reconfigurable Facilities and Structures - Conduct a detailed assessment of idealized building systems and requirements to determine the optimum materials and assembly technologies to support the concept of a low-cost, long-life, reconfigurable structure or building as well as improvements to current construction methods. Apply science-based analysis tools to reverse-engineer materials needs to drive the research agenda for construction systems. Recommend projects suitable for pilots for new materials systems.
Defect-free Materials - Develop new and enhanced construction materials that are cost-effective and outperform existing materials because of their assured quality. Develop the capability to cost-effectively detect any defects in construction materials and to test compliance with material standards.
Lightweight Materials - Develop lightweight, high-strength, high-modulus materials and fabrication methods that enable low-cost assembly, maintenance, and ownership. Develop understanding of long-term life and failure modes and mechanisms of high-modulus materials and material systems such as woven fibers, textured materials, and their anisotropic behavior characteristics. Develop manufacturing and on-site assembly methods for lightweight materials.
Insensitive Materials - Develop reengineered and new materials that provide greatly improved resistance to fire, impact, structural strain/stress, corrosion, and similar extreme performance regimes. Engineer material failure modes for safety and graceful degradation (e.g., flame-resistant materials that minimize release of toxic gases when their ignition temperature is finally reached).
Placed Materials - Develop placed materials with reduced and/or triggered curing time for rapid functionality and reduced overall build time. Develop materials and placement technologies that can be configured without the use of temporary forms and fixtures. Develop imbedded or integrated sensing methods and strategies for raw and processed materials and components. Investigate and develop self-repairing, smart materials for construction applications. Develop high-strength placed materials that provide required strength with much smaller and lighter layers.
Advanced Coatings and Protective Surfaces - Develop long-life coating systems and protectants that extend the operational life of construction materials and structures while minimizing routine repair and rework. Develop functionally reconfigurable materials and coatings and sensing for thermal, aesthetics, safety, environmental, and other adaptive applications.

3. Rapid, Low-cost Specialty Fabrication

Provide design and manufacturing technologies and processes, and supporting business processes that drastically reduce the time, cost, and complexity of acquiring specialty fabricated products from distributed job shops to support capital projects.

Capital Projects B2B Net for Specialty Fabricated Products - Apply electronic commerce technologies to connect project prime and support contractors with specialty fabricators, enabling rapid sourcing, contracting, and electronic interchange of requirements and design data.
Fabrication Services Analysis - Conduct an industry-wide survey to baseline the time/cost/quality of capital project items commonly commissioned through specialty fabricators, and prioritize areas where improved fabrication processes (e.g., net-shape forming) offer improved quality capability, turnaround time, and cost.
Fabrication Process Initiatives - Match the identified needs of the Fabrication Services Analysis task to best practices, cutting-edge advances, the lean fabrication model, and ongoing R&D in other manufacturing sectors. Based on the analysis, launch initiatives to 1) speed the adoption of high-priority process improvements in the capital projects specialty fabrication sector and 2) encourage focusing of manufacturing R&D to attack areas where improvements are most needed by the capital projects industry.

4. Automated, Rapid-erecting Facilities

Develop design concepts, advanced materials, and construction systems and methods enabling fast, automated erection of facilities and structures.

Smart Materials and Components/Assemblies - Develop smart materials and assemblies that can sense and transmit information about their status, location, and condition, including the ability to self-correct or to invoke required maintenance and repair.
Reconfigurable Materials - Develop materials that can alter their shape or properties via sensing of external and internal conditions, such as walls that are flexible for transport but that become rigid for installation.
Automation Integrated into Materials - Develop materials and components that contain automated components that perform or support assembly and placement.
Model-driven Construction Systems - Develop integration and control schemes and technologies enabling the Asset Lifecycle Information System (see Element 9) to directly control construction equipment with minimal human assistance or intervention.
Engineering for Automated Construction - Develop new engineering methods and standards that support highly automated, rapid construction methods, including the requisite focus on safety and control.
New Connection Technologies and Methodologies - Expand on current trends in connection technology to allow components to mesh seamlessly via computer-driven fastening/connecting and activation mechanisms.
Standardized Construction Components - Significantly expand the standardization and integration compatibility of construction components, enabling "customization on the fly" via creative integration.
Low-impact Site Prep - Develop new facility and utilities concepts and supporting engineering and construction techniques that minimize or eliminate requirements for underground work, minimize the need to adapt to existing site conditions, and provide a complete environmental barrier preventing release of any waste to ambient air, ground, and water.
Improved Joining - Develop new materials and methodologies that allow faster assembly of components, require fewer on-site craft skills and equipment during assembly, and support highly engineered and automated rapid-erection designs and methods such as automated laser activated joining of steel structural members.
Zero Temporary Structures - Develop highly engineered erection methods that eliminate the need for the fabrication and handling of temporary systems such as scaffolding, material lifting and placement, and support. Develop materials that do not require temporary construction systems (e.g., forming or packing materials).
Intelligent, Interactive Construction Equipment and Systems - Develop new classes of construction equipment and systems (e.g., cranes, lifts, earth movers, pipefitters, autowelders, material handlers) with the onboard intelligence and flexibility to autonomously place and install materials and components, working in collaboration with different items of equipment and under human guidance and control.

5. Radically Advanced Construction Concepts

Explore and develop breakthrough technologies that support the ultimate vision of entirely self-constructing facilities and structures.

Programmable Nanomaterials and Nanoconstructors - Develop the technological basis for nanodevices that can be programmed with the complete design for a facility or structure and which will process raw material feed stocks to systematically build the facility and communicate real-time progress to the Asset Lifecycle Information System (see Element 9).
Biomimetic Materials, Structures, and Facility Systems - Develop the technological basis for materials, structures, and facility systems that monitor ambient conditions, loads, stresses, and requirements and autonomously "morph" - in a manner similar to a biological system - within specified control limits to optimize performance under changing conditions, including proactive response to fire, chemical/biological contamination, and other safety-critical events.

6. Renovation Execution Technologies

Provide extensions to emerging construction and O and M technologies to support the unique needs of facility upgrades and major renovations.

Non-intrusive Autonomous Effectors - Develop small-scale autonomous devices able to operate inside existing structures (e.g., walls and piping) to perform common tasks such as rewiring and removal/replacement of insulation.
Legacy Integration and Emulation Technologies - Develop techniques, materials, systems, and practices that support the renovation of legacy facilities/structures without compromising desirable features, such as in the case of historical preservation, and which enable "minimum change" renovation of legacy materials and structures, resulting in low-cost refurbishment instead of large-scale renovation.
Advanced Materials for Reinforcement and Resurfacing - Develop new materials (and supporting application techniques) capable of being applied to/integrated with existing facility materials to provide reinforcement and resurfacing to like-new condition or to accommodate changes in requirements, such as higher throughput, greater loads, new safety/security/environmental compliance features, or more extreme environmental conditions.

7. Lean Construction

No information provided for this section.

8. New Materials Needs Assessment

Will bring together a coalition of users, material providers, and R&D organizations to perform a definitive needs assessment for new materials and methods based on the high-level requirements defined in the Capital Projects Technology Roadmap. Requirements include the need for stronger, lighter materials that can be placed and assembled in a fraction of the time of current processes; tools and techniques for high-speed automated erection; and tools and equipment that are inherently safer and verify quality in-process. Emerging technologies such as smart, self-adapting materials and nano-assemblers will also be evaluated for future consideration. This will provide the impetus for major breakthroughs in construction materials and methods. These advances will reduce build times and cost to a fraction of today's norms and greatly extend the life and performance of constructed facilities.

9. Streamlining New Materials Adoption

No information provided for this section.

10. Advanced Autonomous Robots

No information provided for this section.