EAST LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – Engineers, students and city leaders gathered in East Lansing today to unveil the first steps of a new “self-healing and heatable pliable concrete.”
MSU President Kevin Guskiewicz met with Spartan faculty and staff at the Research Engineering Complex Friday morning to lay the first official floor slab.
(WLNS)
“We are so proud to be able to conduct [this research] here at MSU. The relevance of the work we care so much about,” Guskiewicz said.
Researchers point out that the material's flexibility, thermal expansion and self-healing properties are important factors for embedded sensors, which often lead to failures in existing concrete.
The MSU Innovation Center says early results suggest a promising product that requires less maintenance, requires less road salt in the winter and offers lower overall life cycle costs.
(WLNS)
“And the weather like Michigan has… this kind of open ground damage… It's going to further damage the roads and other infrastructure, and our concrete behaves differently. Our concrete bends instead of cracking,” said Bill Jin, an assistant professor of engineering at MSU.
Guskiewicz says developments like these are critical to improving something all Michigan residents agree on: roads.
(WLNS)
“Advances like this are an often-underappreciated foundation for the lifestyle and mobility we all enjoy,” said Guskiewicz. “And that foundation lies squarely within the portfolio of this world-leading public research university to address the major challenges we all face, improve our quality of life, and support our prosperity and economic competitiveness.”
Jin says their next steps are to collect data over the winter before they can make this pliable concrete available for commercial use across the state.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports and streaming video, visit WLNS 6 News.